Re: Magnum Alert 900 and Touch Tone Dialing

["Jim" <alarminex@xxxxxxx>]

Bob Worthy wrote:
> "Jim" <alarminex@xxxxxxx> wrote in message
> news:1128536535.003773.35650@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> >
> > If ...... after all this, it proves to not be reliable enough for you,
> > Id suggest that you upgrade the panel but I'd stick with Napco. They've
> > issued a notice that their panels will work over VoIP and I've not had
> > any problems with them over the Optimum network. I haven't heard of any
> > other mfg who's issued a like notice.
>
> Jim,
>
> Do you think that maybe it isn't the fact that the panels won't work with
> VOIP but rather that the manufacturers recognize the fact that the
> functionality of the VOIP equipment is subject to interruptions leaving the
> communications path for the security intermittent, therefore not making a
> committment that their eqiupment will work with VOIP.

Wow, that's a long question!

Ans:   Idonno!

We've had meetings with the cable company and when you ask the "so
called" experts that they send to these meetings, question about what
we can and can't expect, we've gone away with no more information then
we already had, which is scant. They don't know what frequencies or
pulse widths, or tones will or wont pass, they just don't have a clue.
The system was designed for voice transmission and if it's not voice,
they don't know what it will do. For us, it's hard to believe that they
didn't consider all of the other devices attached to a phone line. But
...... on the other hand, they probably DID consider it didn't think it
was worth the trouble to find out and figured the end user will either
buy it or not. But, they may have figured that if the price difference
compared to POTS line is low enough, the consumer WILL buy it, so who
cares if something eles doesn't work. They're really not concerned
about whether the consumer has a reliable alarm reporting system or
not. After providing all of my clients with the negatives of VoIP in my
Newsletter for 6 months prior to the mass maketing by the cable company
and then requiring clients to sign a waiver, I've had more people keep
the VoIP service then not. So it's possible that the cable companys
marketing research may have dictated what the optimum selling price
would need to be to accomplish this. Can they do that and be that
accurate? Or, is it just dumb luck or dumb consumer?


>I do know that, on a
> product we use, we had a system communicating on a Vonage system. The panel
> would recognize phone line interuption and go into trouble each time the
> phone dropped out. The panel would communicate fine as long as the phone was
> working. Along with the panel going into trouble, the custmer recognized the
> fact that the phones were dropping out. After the hurricane, they didn't
> have phones for an extended amount of time and when their neighbor didn't
> loose phones at all during the storm, they went back to Bell.

There was one case where I had to go back and remove tel line
monitoring, for some reason. The voice communication would work but
there was something that the panel was seeing that kept making it go
into telephone line fail.

An RF radio engineer once told me the following, with regard to
designing wave propagation devices. At this point, I think it also
applies to VoIP. " Ten percent is engineering. Ten percent is
ingenuity. The rest is pure magic."