What is SIIPAT ?

SIIPAT is the proposed transmission format for sending alarm messages over the Internet instead of dial-up phone connections.

Why over the Internet ?

With the growth of the Alarm Industry, more and more "Mom & Pop" alarm companies are becomming national and international companies. One of the biggest disadvantages to having an alarm company that is not in the subscribers immediate area is the long distance charges incurred by the subscriber or the "800" fees the alarm company incurs. By using the Internet as the transmission medium, local dial-up service can be used to send a message across town, across the country or even around the world for the same cost and most times much quicker than a dial-up connection could have performed it.

What about the collapse of the Internet ?

If you believe that the Internet is going to collapse from it's own weight, then obviously you would not want to use the Internet to transmit alarm messages. Personally I believe that the Internet is just as reliable if not more so than the average local telco-switch. SIIPAT is designed to be a partner with other transmission formats not to replace them entirely because no transmission method is 100% failsafe no matter what their salespeople tell you.

How fast can a signal be sent with SIIPAT ?

The primary intended user for SIIPAT are alarm systems where a dedicated Internet connection is available. In an environment where a connection is already established with the Internet via either dial-up or direct connection, SIIPAT can send a single zone alarm transmission in less than one second. In fact, using a dial-up 14.4 connection (the slowest our ISP supports) we have sent upwards of 35 completely seperate alarm transmissions in the same second. Obviously the speed of the remote and host connections as well as other activity on the Internet at that moment in time will effect the speed of transmission.

What types of messages can be sent ?

SIIPAT is not limited to just messages from alarm panels. The format is designed to support any message from 1 through 99 characters long. These messages could be signals from an alarm panel that sends a single "zone" number or could be text descriptions. One of SIIPAT's intended purposes is for central stations to monitor other central stations. Since you wouldn't want a competitor monitoring your central station, SIIPAT is the perfect answer because the other central station could be across town or around the world. SIIPAT also allows central stations to monitor things not possible before. For instance they can monitor non-alarm computer related messages such as mail servers or internal networks. Any software program that is capable of the encryption that SIIPAT uses can send a message.

What alarm equipment supports SIIPAT ?

The answer to this is two part. The first answer is no alarm equipment supports SIIPAT directly. The next answer is that almost all alarm equipment can support SIIPAT today. Since a computer needs to be involved due to the technology to interface between the alarm equipment and the Internet, it is very easy to use an add-in card in the computer that supports voltage level inputs. SeaLevel Systems makes several "Radish" boards which the software can monitor as many as 32 inputs. The alarm equipment simply needs to provide dry contact closures for the card to detect a change in status. If only one or two possible signals are needed, the standard serial ports in the computer can be hooked up to a loop-back connector with a relay activated by the alarm panel.

Who uses SIIPAT today ?

SIIPAT was developed to communicate status information between water towers and the dispatch centers for several municipalities in northern Illinois over the city wide TCP/IP networks they already had in place. It is also being used to monitor the status of doors at several fire stations during the winter months if they are left open after the trucks leave. SIMS also uses SIIPAT to monitor security and status information from our SIMSWeb servers which are at customer sites all around the world.

How is SIIPAT marketed ?

SIIPAT is not marketed in any way. SIIPAT is not a product, only a protocol. The products or methods which use SIIPAT are entirely up to their developers. I only created the format by which the messages can be sent across the Internet and some sample programs to prove it could be done reliably. What happens with SIIPAT from here is up to the individual manufacturers in the alarm industry. I will work with developers as much as I can to assist them in deploying SIIPAT and am willing to entertain suggestions from developers as to improvements or corrections to the protocol. The goal is a "Standard" though that will remain constant regardless of manufacturer. Many developers in this industry seem to think that their ideas are best with no regard to others, if only they could see that they are shooting themselves in the foot.

Comments regarding SIIPAT may be sent to: siipat@nevets.net

To view/download the current RFC regarding SIIPAT, click on the filename: SIIPAT.TXT