TVIEW: Network Management & Diagnostic Software

Operation

The diagnostics software employs a user friendly Windows menu system for the selection of operations, database access, and configuration settings.

The database consists of a list of remote “addresses” and “names” for the modems on the system. The address of each remote is defined by its unique serial number. The serial numbers are entered into the diagnostic database in the PC, and enabled by the user for access to the diagnostic facilities.

Each radio unit has its own alarm parameter database. When an alarm is reported it is displayed on the user console. Alarms can be prioritised, acknowledged, logged, printed etc. To interrogate a particular unit for a measurement, the user selects the units address from a menu. Collected radio status and alarm information is stored in a database. This data can be graphically presented as a “trend” chart for analysis or fault finding.

Networking facilities are provided for multiple user client-server access to the diagnostics facility.

Network Analysis Tools

The diagnostic facilities allow retrieval of packet statistics from each radio modem. The diagnostics software uses these statistics to calculate packet and bit error rates, and also network efficiency and bandwidth utilisation. These network analysis features are an invaluable tool for larger networks.

In the transmit direction, each radio modem can report the number of data bytes transmitted, and the number of frames / packets transmitted. This enables calculation of the average frame rate, and transmit channel utilisation.

In the receive direction, each radio modem can report the number of good and bad packets received, and the number of bytes received in good packets. This enables calculation of average frame size, average frame rate, receive channel occupancy, and receive channel efficiency.

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