From the Product Manager's POV
A conversation with Mas Kosaka
- By Security Products Staff
- May 30, 2007
ACCESS controllers are a mainstay of many security systems, but the technology hasn’t seen many leaps or innovations. PCSC promises a new day with its Fault Tolerant™ Controller. We talked with Mas Kosaka, president and CEO of PCSC, about the product and how the technology is helping push controllers into the next generation.
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 controllers are the next generation of controllers, and are 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 or hardware/firmware failure.
Q. How is it possible to increase reliability and the responsiveness of security systems and networks using the 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, the controller provides an optional communication path to reconnect back to the host and remaining controllers. This self-healing technique is called real-time dynamic network architecture. The alternate communication path can be landline or wireless, whichever is best. Upon a hardware or firmware failure, current controllers just fail. Our FT controllers provide 100-percent backup operations—if one fails, another simply takes over its duties. As long as there is at least one 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 uses 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 to automatically reconfigure itself upon communication or hardware failure.
Q. Why did PCSC develop a new controller?
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 controller functions like it did more than 20 years ago.
During the 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. This 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. 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 lose all four communication ports before you had a communication failure. We offer a variety of communications topologies like LAN, ZigBee wireless, Wi-Fi and PoE. Not only is the communication redundant, the controllers operate in a redundant mode, using peer-to-peer communications to maintain network and database status. 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 controller’s duties. As long as there one operational MC, the system will continue to offer 100-percent security.
Q. What are the IT implications?
A. The advantage for the IT professional is the MCs are an appliance. Unlike the existing products, where installation of a controller is provided in a wall-mounted can, the MCs are offered in a standard 19-inch rack. These racks can be installed in the IT center for security and maintenance. The only connections to the MC are the communications and power, similar to a router. The wirings for the door, such as reader, lock, door status and REX, are located near the door or in an electrical closet. The MCs provide an option for PoE, enabling the power backup to match existing backup systems within the IT center.
Q. Why would an end user choose this technology compared to existing architecture?
A. The FT series provides end users with a variety of configuration options and feature sets, enabling them to custom design a security system that meets exact requirements using standard components. The FT design architecture can be optimized for single-building, campus or enterprise configurations. FT provides system reliability with its self-healing RDNA process. Today, when a controller fails, it requires immediate attention, and the need to repair the problem becomes an emergency. With the FT series automatic redundancy, emergencies become a thing of the past. Even after MC fails, access decisions are processed and alarms are monitored with no degradation to the security of the system. A failure of a MC becomes a status notification rather than an emergency response. The end user and integrator can now schedule the repair of the MC rather than having to replace or fix the MC in an emergency manner.
Q. What are the advantages for the integrators?
A. Integrators can now design exact security architecture for every client without cutting corners on security. Integrators will be able to design systems that enable clients to process access decisions and monitor alarms, even during a MC failure. Controller failures are no longer an emergency.
Depending on the number of MCs at a customer site, the integrator can determine the urgency of the failure and have the ability to schedule the replacement of the failed component. Even routine, preventive maintenance had to be scheduled and coordinated with the end user so not to affect the security. Installers today can replace boards without degrading the system security or operations.
Q. Will the product meet new Homeland Security requirements?
A. The controllers offer high-security alarm input monitoring using a “Four” state monitoring rather than three on all inputs, even the Wiegand reader port. The controllers provide supervision on all readers, including biometric devices. We even provide monitoring of the REX in four states to prevent tampering in high-security installations.
Our current controllers support a 12-digit card number, but we realized the need for larger card numbers, so the new MCs are implemented to support a 24-digit card number exceeding any requirements for the FIPS and TWIC card formats.
Q. Since the architecture is new and completely different from your existing systems, how are you planning to support legacy products?
A. Our corporate design philosophy has been to provide an upgrade path for legacy products. All of our designs incorporate inherent upgrade capabilities, enabling customers to upgrade, even systems installed in 1983. We have some customers that still insist on using their very old system. The FT architecture is different from our current controller architecture, but our new host system, LiNC-NXG (LiNC-NET Next Generation), will accommodate both architectures at the same time. This enables our existing end users to retain their current PCSC controller platforms, and for future expansion, provide a simple add-on process to incorporate Fault Tolerant architecture.