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Here is what others are saying...

“We believe the PCSC Fault Tolerant Panel design to be the most innovative solution in Access Control we’ve seen in some time. We now can advise our clients that they do not have to worry about outside factors, such as network or wiring failures, affecting the reliability of their Security systems."

Bill Scheinman, President - The Scheinman Group Inc.

"In respect to the Fault Tolerant Demo, we are convinced that we would have a competitive advantage, particularly when we are dealing with larger access control systems. If we have something that the competitor doesn't have this is very much a plus."

Martin Askgaard, CFO - Millennium Alarm Services, Inc.

"I can only parrot what I've heard others say... just terrific. From my point of view, it was indeed a breath of fresh air. Reason, simple to understand and easy to promote."

Dave Solhaug, President - NVS

If you've got some positive feedback, send us your comments. We may just quote you... email to: news@pcscinfo.com include your name, title and company.

Questions & Answers - Just a few of the most frequently asked questions. As featured in the June 2007 Issue of Security Products...

Q: You have recently introduced the Fault Tolerant (FT™) Controller. What is this product and how will it improve access control, alarm monitoring and output control systems?
A: The Fault Tolerant controllers are the next generation of controllers, designed to greatly improve system integrity and reliability. Our definition of integrity is to provide an “online” security network without any system degradation, even during the loss of communication, hardware or firmware failure.

Q: How is it possible to increase the reliability and the responsiveness of security systems and networks using this product?
A: We’ve developed a system that automatically enables itself to be dynamically reconfigured, eliminating “failed” components from the system. If there is a loss of primary communications, we provide an optional communication path to “reconnect” back to the host and remaining controllers. This self-healing technique is called “Real-time Dynamic Network Architecture” (RDNA). The alternate communication path can be “land line” or wireless, which ever is best. Upon a hardware or firmware failure, current controllers just fail. Whereas PCSC FT controllers provide 100% backup operations if one should fail, another simply takes over its duties. As long as there is at least one functioning FT controller the system will operate without any security degradation.

Q: What are the main enhancements that make the Fault Tolerant system work so well?
A: The FT system utilizes the capabilities of 32 bit CPU and Ethernet topology to provide a higher level of computing and communication integrity. We incorporated a self-healing architecture allowing automatic reconfiguration upon communication or hardware failure.

Q: Why did PCSC develop a new “controller" architecture?
A: There have been no new innovations within the Access Control industry in a long time. The controllers have become faster, include the latest communication techniques and incorporate the use of many card technologies but essentially today’s controllers function like they did over 20 years ago. During our design process, we wanted to develop something that was truly innovative. We wanted to design features for the “Next Generation” of controllers to be useful for integrators as well as end users. Our design goals were to provide high “Reliability” and the most “Flexible” system configuration architecture to meet today’s industry demands. We wanted to develop a system that created the least amount of impact to the end user during a failure. The design that best fit our goals was the “Fault Tolerant Architecture” for access control and alarm monitoring. “Fault Tolerant” architecture is not new to the PC world but is not available in access controllers, until now.

Q: What makes this, the “Next Generation” of controllers?
A: PCSC’s “Fault Tolerant” (FT) series provides the next logical evolution in controller development. The FT architecture provides a self healing architecture for communications and controller hardware failures. The FT architecture provides full security during primary communications failure or hardware failure. We call the automatic self healing process, “Real-time Dynamic Network Architecture” or RDNA. During a “failure”, the system will automatically reconfigure its network and continue to process access decisions, alarm and other transactional information to and from the host system, LiNC-NET. The System provides Primary, Secondary, Tertiary or even Quandary communication ports for communication backup. You would have to loose all 4 communication ports before you had a “communication failure”. We offer a variety of communications topologies like LAN, ZigBee wireless, WiFi and PoE. Not only is the communication redundant, the controllers operate in a redundant mode, utilizing Peer to Peer communications to maintain the status of the network and database. If one MC fails for any reason, its duties are automatically transferred to another MC. If the secondary MC fails, another MC will automatically cut over to take over the failed controllers duties. As long as there is at least one operational MC, the system will continue to offer 100% security!

Be sure to read the print version of Security Products Magazine, June Issue for more Questions and Answers on the FT System.