Monitor your university BACnet network

60 days site monitoring.jpg

Try it free for two months. 

You manage thousands of devices, spanning millions of square feet. Shifting demands keep the network in perpetual flux. When devices go down, it can put university research at stake.

Do you have:

  • Frustration with your site?
  • Controllers or devices going offline?
  • Too much traffic?
  • Traffic taking down buildings?
  • Vendors not being helpful, or pointing fingers?
  • Slow graphics?
  • Missing alarms?
  • Slow or missing data?
  • Improperly configured data exchange?
  • Trend logs not being serviced?

Visual BACnet Site Monitoring is for you.

Visual BACnet Site Monitoring cuts the time, effort, and energy needed to understand your network.

Cornell_University,_Ho_Plaza_and_Sage_Hall.jpg

Universities are like smart cities. Campuses are massive and intricate, with thousands of devices to meet the needs of countless different stakeholders. You’re responsible for keeping every device online and running as it should.

To anticipate issues and respond proactively, you have to monitor your BACnet network. This is easier said than done, though. To gain that deep understanding, you need periodic packet captures (pcaps): at least at the beginning and end of the day, or all the time, depending on the system. These captures will show how the network is behaving in response to different variables.

But who wants to put in that time? Who even has that kind of time? You would have to trek across site; sit for an hour, waiting to get a capture; load the capture into Visual BACnet or Wireshark; and finally start assessing the health of your network. Do that two (or more) times a day, and that’s a lot of time and energy to get a regular read on your BACnet health.  

Visual BACnet Site Monitoring lets you track trends, set alarms, and optimize your system.

1. Trend

Visual BACnet Site Monitoring allows you to track trends in your network health over time. You can identify when changes happen in your network, and expose recurring issues that may not otherwise be apparent.

2. Alarm

Visual BACnet Site Monitoring sends you alarms when your network health decreases unexpectedly. No need to log in and monitor your system every day. Simply sit back and trust that it’s running well unless you have received an email alert.

3. Optimize

When you do receive that alert, Visual BACnet is ready to help you solve the problem. Drill down to discover what has changed, pinpoint the devices that need reconfiguring, and get the network healthy again in no time.

How Princeton University stopped finger-pointing1200px-Princeton_Stadium.jpg

As far as signs of network failures go, Princeton University was getting a very visual — and glaring — one: for weeks, the school’s football stadium lights would suddenly turn on in the middle of the night. Each time, these blazing lights would wake up residents on campus. Controls engineer Gary Brancato would get a phone call between 1 and 3 a.m., and his staff would have to drive down to reset panels and turn off the lights. This kept happening sporadically, and Gary could not figure out the root of the recurring issue.

When Gary approached his vendors, they both thought their systems were in good condition. However, Visual BACnet was showing a network health of 17% out of 100%. He was able to bring both of his vendors in to work together for four days to bring the network health up to 56%. They discovered a flood of Global Who-Is requests when the buildings were starting up was flooding the network, and the panels were failing on. With the help of Visual BACnet, Gary put a stop to the midnight stadium lights, and significantly reduced the number of Global Who-Is requests from 198 to 17.

Learn more about how Princeton University solved its BACnet woes with Visual BACnet.

 

How one campus managed their vendorsVisual BACnet Site Monitoring screenshot.png

When one large campus used Visual BACnet Site Monitoring, they quickly saw the benefits to these alerts. A couple weeks into monitoring their network, a contractor came on site to add some new devices to the network. The installation went well, and the contractor finished up the job. When the System Administrator checked their email, though, they saw a steep drop in network health: it went from 78% to 0% in a single day. Because they quickly saw the network issues and could pinpoint when and why this happened, they were able to have the contractors come back the following day. The problems were resolved, and the campus wasn’t charged for the emergency call.

60-day free trial

If you manage a university or school district, sign up to try Visual BACnet Site Monitoring for free, from October 1st to November 30th. You’ll have 60 days to monitor your campus, diagnose problems, and troubleshoot at zero cost. Fill in the form below, and we will contact you to answer questions and get you set up! 

Try Site Monitoring Now

Try site monitoring for free

  

"I'm not a Wireshark guy. [...] Visual BACnet brought everything to a layman's view." 

- Gary Brancato, Princeton University

"Visual BACnet gave me a way of quantifying the value of my work. I was able to see the differential from before I started working on the BACnet system to after I was done." 

- Brian Esser, Siemens

"It's like hiring a new guy that's a BACnet Guru."

- Brian Gallant, Inland Control & Services Inc.