sundance-communications.com Forums Telephone Services Security, Alarms and Paging Monitoring an internet connection

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Is there a program and/or a piece of hardware that can be installed at a remote site that will allow me to be notified by an alarm transmission (via a plain old land line-based alarm system) if a remote computer/router/cable modem has lost contact with the internet?

A customer uses a computer at a remote location to send video feeds from security cameras. He needs to be notified immediately if and when that location loses its internet connection. The location has a central station alarm panel, with a land-line connection and back-up cell communicator, available that has extra unused zones.

I can think of a few ways to do this but no magic box you can buy that has it already done in it. If you cant find anything else to fit the bill just drop me a line and I can help ya get something squared away.

How does this sound:

There are now IP-based fire and burglary alarm panels. These panels have a feature that will poll the IP connection constantly, and if it fails, the panel switches over to either a copper dial-up connection or a cellular-based communicator so that a trouble signal can be transmitted to the central station.

Assuming the alarm panel loses its IP connection, so have the cameras/server, and the loss of IP connection would be received as an alarm trouble. The alarm company contacts the owner.

I think this would work. Comments?

you know that may just work...as long as the lose of internet sends a report code to the central station.

That's what it does.

We have written scripts that "ping" the IP address of a specific computer constantly. When the script receives a specified number of timeouts, it sends an e-mail alert to you. I know it's not exactly what you are looking for, but we could probably modify the script to dial out using the modem in a PC.

Yeah, I've done something similar using one of the TTL logic pins from a parallel port. You just trip a NC relay and activate a zone.

Also works for door latches and lights