The big question is how is the T1 line being utilized? If it is linking phone systems, then chances are it has all of its bandwidth utilized for that but you could look into what resources the phone system may offer for data links within its bandwidth. You may look into settiing up a fixed ISDN link to give you 64kbps or 128kbps using one or two ports on the T1 or independantly through the phone company. You say the monitoring systems link to a server with 12 out of a possible 16 serial ports. What is the configuration of the serial ports and how much traffic are they carrying? Can your server and monitoring machines be reconfigured to service all monitored systems through a multidrop RS485 on one port? Can it support several such multiport configurations where one or more can be carried on the T1? A "nailed" port in a phone switch is generally capable of up to 64kbps full duplex and that is one of 24 possible ports on the T1. Depending on traffic, a RS485 multidrop on one T1 port could support over 30 machines but since this would be passing though a fixed full duplex serial port, one full server port would need to be allocated to the remote site. Reliability issues may disallow the use of a single port for multiple machines but the same issue could rule out a single T1 as well.
What do you mean by analog? Serial ports etc are data links, not analog signals being digitized and measured. If the signals linked to your monitoring system are analog current loops or the like from sensors, then the picture changes. There are data aquisition systems that can handle this as well but we will need more specifics. There are catalogs full of information to deal with these issues as well.
Main Topics
Browse All Topics
by: scully00000Posted on 2003-09-23 at 08:10:11ID: 9413628
Hi!
I think you are looking at this the wrong way. I assume that your T1 connection is used to network the two plants (email, files etc.). If this is the case, then you won't be able to do anything with it in the way you are suggesting, as the line will be taken up with network traffic.
There are a number of things that could be investigated for this. Firstly, who is the manufacturer of the monitoring system? If it is a fairly recent system, it is likely that they have developed a piece of software that can do precisely what you are looking for - send the serial data coming in over an IP network to another machine. Failing that, you could probably have someone write you a piece of software that would do it.
Give me a bit more information and I'll see what I can do