The remote monitoring and control of UPS devices performed remotely by control centers is a commonly adopted solution to limit required human interventions on site. Nowadays, the most usually adopted communication link is still represented by PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network) lines, providing only limited bandwidth and at not negligible economic costs. The paper proposes a novel control center communication solution for UPS devices exploiting the Internet instead of PSTN lines. The Internet represents a widely accepted standard; adopting it as communication infrastructure the management and integration of our monitoring solution with other Internet-based systems becomes easier. For example, it is possible to provide via standard Web browser UPS information, eventually integrated with other customer related information such as its billing state. In addition, exploiting the Internet instead of PSTN lines permits the transmission of great amount of data, thus enabling fine-grained monitoring and control, while at the same time permits to greatly reduce the economic impact of monitoring systems, assuming the availability of Internet connectivity at no additional cost for the customer. In particular, our solution is based on the encapsulation of standard data and commands inside HTTP (Hyper Text Transfer Protocol) packets, sent among UPS devices residing inside enterprise networks and an HTTP server located in France, at the edge of the Chloride private network. By exploiting HTTP as encapsulating protocol, there is the positive side effect of overcoming usually adopted enterprise security policies which limit network traffic among local and remote nodes, thus facilitating the deployment in enterprise scenarios. Some implementation details are provided to underline the feasibility of the proposed solution, both in relation to the client side capability to perform on microcontrollers with limited resources and to the server side to correctly manage a great number of clients simultaneously.
LIFE.net over Web: an Advanced Monitoring Protocol for UPS Systems
GIANNELLI, Carlo;
2007
Abstract
The remote monitoring and control of UPS devices performed remotely by control centers is a commonly adopted solution to limit required human interventions on site. Nowadays, the most usually adopted communication link is still represented by PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network) lines, providing only limited bandwidth and at not negligible economic costs. The paper proposes a novel control center communication solution for UPS devices exploiting the Internet instead of PSTN lines. The Internet represents a widely accepted standard; adopting it as communication infrastructure the management and integration of our monitoring solution with other Internet-based systems becomes easier. For example, it is possible to provide via standard Web browser UPS information, eventually integrated with other customer related information such as its billing state. In addition, exploiting the Internet instead of PSTN lines permits the transmission of great amount of data, thus enabling fine-grained monitoring and control, while at the same time permits to greatly reduce the economic impact of monitoring systems, assuming the availability of Internet connectivity at no additional cost for the customer. In particular, our solution is based on the encapsulation of standard data and commands inside HTTP (Hyper Text Transfer Protocol) packets, sent among UPS devices residing inside enterprise networks and an HTTP server located in France, at the edge of the Chloride private network. By exploiting HTTP as encapsulating protocol, there is the positive side effect of overcoming usually adopted enterprise security policies which limit network traffic among local and remote nodes, thus facilitating the deployment in enterprise scenarios. Some implementation details are provided to underline the feasibility of the proposed solution, both in relation to the client side capability to perform on microcontrollers with limited resources and to the server side to correctly manage a great number of clients simultaneously.I documenti in SFERA sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
