A leading European telecommunication service provider with over 80 years of experience in broadcast needed a high density and expandable I/O solution to monitor and control hundreds of unmanned base stations. This widely distributed network of base stations is used to provide nationwide access to a variety of services, including satellite communications, digital broadcast, television broadcast, and telecommunications. Monitoring and controlling this vast network of unmanned sites was a top priority for their maintenance engineers. Their existing solution was to use network management software (NMS) to manage SNMP-compatible network devices, but that leaves out I/O devices. An I/O controller that could integrate with the NMS would bring all of those devices into that same system.

SNMP protocol support for I/O control

High density I/O support

High level expandability for future growth

The customer selected Moxa’s ioLogik E4200 modular active Ethernet I/O as a flexible I/O solution. The E4200 is both compact and modular, which makes this one product appropriate for many different places and applications.

Most importantly, the ioLogik E4200 offers SNMP-to-I/O functions, a feature unique to Moxa’s products. IT users already have experience in using the SNMP protocol to manage network devices, but find it difficult to extend this expertise to I/O devices because SNMP to I/O communications is so problematic. Moxa overcomes this hurdle by offering an SNMP-to-I/O link with complete SNMP v1, v2c, and v3 support. This makes it possible for customers to use any NMS with Moxa’s I/O devices.

SNMP traps provide an active alarm message; the customer can pre-define a threshold for each I/O channel. Once the value hits the threshold, the ioLogik will immediately send out the triggered trap message pro-actively, without any polling. SNMP v3 adds security features to avoid intrusion from hackers.

On the software side, the ioLogik E4200 offers Moxa’s Click&Go™ configuration, which is a simple, programming-free configuration system. Click&Go’s™ menu-driven IF-THEN-ELSE style logic is easy to understand and can be configured in just five minutes.

SNMP support helps customers to integrate systems with an existing NMS

Modular design provides flexibility

Compact size for deployment in confined spaces