RCM3710 Bridges the Gap of Remote Management
The complete set of TCP/IP libraries offered by Dynamic C® made it possible to offer our client a shorter than expected time to market, and a high quality product at a hard-to-beat cost.
Telecommunications is a multi-billion dollar industry, which spends large sums of money in remote management of equipment to better support their services. As the focus remained on remote management of communications hardware such as modems, routers, and switches, support systems such as power is catching up. Companies are now looking to integrate power systems into a centralized remote management system, making it easier to manage all systems from one location. The tough battle is to integrate all the devices onto one network. Depending on the manufacturer and the age of the device, some devices may use a serial connection with a proprietary network protocol, and some a new standardized communication standard. XControl and Ricardo Moreno with the help of Rabbit® have developed a solution to bridge the communication gap between legacy devices and cutting-edge technology.
XControl based in Bogota, Colombia has identified a common issue with the integration of devices in remote management. As telecommunications systems become larger and wide spread, the need for remote management systems becomes very important. Remote management allows companies to maintain services quickly and efficiently to customers, while maintaining a low operational cost. Unfortunately, for these companies, to integrate a unified remote management system is rather expensive. Older power systems employ a simple serial connection with proprietary protocols, which means incompatibility with newer systems that use the standardized SNMP and TCP/IP protocols. Adding the standardized SNMP protocols to legacy devices is too expensive explained Ricardo Moreno of XControl. “Our LanAXS product line, based on RabbitCore® modules gives an interesting solution to this problem, integrating the devices with serial port and proprietary protocols to TCP/IP based supervisory systems by making what we call a second level conversion of protocols,” says Moreno. Essentially LanAXS product line acts as a serial-to-Ethernet bridge and a protocol converter thus being the SNMP gateway. Moreno explains, “This SNMP gateway was designed for a line of power rectifiers which provide energy support to non assisted telecommunication nodes. We based our design on the RCM3710 core because of its network capabilities, serial ports, memory storage capacity and affordable price.” The SNMP gateway manages the proprietary protocol from the rectifier transparently via the RS-232 serial port. The converter continuously communicates with the rectifier, gathering and storing data in the internal memory. The other function of the SNMP gateway is an SNMP agent that shares the collected information to any management software capable of acting as the SNMP manager. The gateway is configurable by a serial port and serves web pages for remote configuration via HTTP. The SNMP gateway offers connectivity options without the need to change designs and large investments in development.
Rabbit’s RCM3710 offered XControl the solution they were looking for. “We first used a Zilog-based core; the easy-to-use development tools plus complete set of libraries were the decision drivers. What definitely influenced us to develop our products with RabbitCore’s, was Rabbit’s vision of the use TCP/IP in embedded systems,” Moreno explained. Furthermore “the complete set of TCP/IP libraries offered by Dynamic C® made it possible to offer our client a shorter than expected time to market, and a high quality product at a hard-to-beat cost.” XControl found RabbitCores to be the right solution for their products, offering the right features, at an affordable cost.
For more information on XControl Sistemas y Soluciones Ltda., visit: www.xcontrol.net
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