Environmental Monitoring

One of the primary methods to reduce your network vulnerability is by implementing an environmental monitoring system. This is highly important. Your essential remote site equipment can be brought down by environmental factors like high temperature, humidity, flooding, fire, and so on. To monitor these effectively, your environmental monitoring equipment must support full four-threshold analog alarms. You also need to be able to control on-site protective equipment like HVAC and fire suppressors.For example, if you can catch an air conditioning failure early, you can intervene. You can start repairs and rebuild the remote site environment before equipment goes into thermal shutdown or the site goes dark.

It is also important to make sure that you have monitored backup power for your environmental monitoring equipment. This equipment is typically AC-powered. It is often overlooked in power backup plans that only provide for DC power.

When it comes to environmental monitoring, it is important to have these features within your system:

• Live analog monitoring. There is no way to effectively monitor temperature with one-threshold discrete alarms. To get effective visibility of remote site temperature, look for an environmental monitoring system with smarts. It should have four-threshold analog inputs. This should include live monitoring of actual temperature levels.
• Support for other environmental alarms. Temperature is simply one of many environmental factors that need to be monitored. Make sure your next environmental monitoring system monitors all your remote site environmental factors. This includes humidity, flooding, power and security.
• Integrated support for monitoring your whole network. You cannot view temperature and other environmental factors separately from your entire network. Therefore, look for an environmental monitoring system that can monitor your revenue-generating equipment. This includes switches, routers, and microwave radios.

Discrete alarms are the most common type of remote monitoring alarm. Still, they are not best suited for environmental monitoring. For environmental monitoring that involves adjustable conditions such as temperature and humidity, analog alarms are best.

Analog alarms connected to common current sensors provide visibility of constantly variable conditions. These include humidity, temperature, and battery voltage. These external conditions can have critical effects on essential equipment. During a service-affecting outage, you need all the information you can get.

One of the primary advantages of using analog alarms for environmental monitoring is their ability to monitor the escalation of the analog values. This gives you insight as to how fast the temperature is rising or dropping. This allows you to better dispatch technicians.

Call DPS Today to see how NetGuardian 832A will provide effective environmental monitoring for your network