Obi ATA's and home alarm system - special settings required?

[Robert.Thompson]

Hello:

Are there special Obi settings required to connect to your home alarm company through a VoIP service supplier using an Obi ATA?

Are there different settings depending upon your alarm system provider?

Thanks for *** any *** info on this subject.

[MurrayB]

VOIP should not be used at all for connecting to a central station. There is a myriad of reasons not the least of which is how the data is deconstructed and then reconstructed as it flows through the internet. The data usually arrives in an unusable form. There are people that have claimed on this forum that they have no problem.

When I dropped my POTS line I went to a cellular communicator with excellent results.

The security system needs to be totally reliable or why bother.

Good luck!

[Robert.Thompson]

"... The security system needs to be totally reliable or why bother."

Ain't that the truth!!

FYI, I made my post after reading:

http://www.voip2go.net/alarm.html
http://www.voip2go.net/adt.html

[MurrayB]

Quick interpretation: the black box that is added essentially provides a dial tone, answers, accepts the data, and passes the data to the central station over the internet as data not as a "phone call" connection.

There are boxes like this if you change monitoring services that do essentially the same thing over the PSTN. The alarm panel does not have to be reprogrammed if it is locked by the original provider.

I am concerned that people are not aware that there are issues migrating to VOIP with a security system.

[ibotalk]

I have been using Obi with GV and vestalink  with 2 separate security systems in 2 separate places  -now for 2 years.   No special settings required.  Few problems.  Both security systems have web pages allowing  monitoring of active protection.  Both poll my alarm systems to ensure they are connected. Both also send out alerts when the internet goes down (via alternate phone numbers and emails)-- one can set the time interval that needs to elapse before it triggers the alarm.

Previously I had ATT with a cellular connection---and another system with a regular ATA phone connection. Both also had problems from time to time and neither provided any monitoring ability  (so it was difficult to know if there was a problem). 

So, I don't get the stringent advice against VOIP security monitoring. Sure it goes down  -rarely does that happen for more than a few minutes---The intruders would have to have perfect timing to take advantage--- and trying to avoid such an unlikely co-incidence implies that a security system can provide absolute protection--- which no system can.