April 10, 2007

Customers that may benefit from this SNIB2 release have one or more of these:

• Large, globalized installations with high traffic: more than 40,000 globalized events per hour. Multiply the number of access grant transactions per hour times the number of controllers on that SNIB2 port to determine the global traffic load. For example,  1200 access grants per hour times 35 controllers = 1200x35 = 42,000 globalized events per hour.
• The need to set an IP address before physically moving it to another controller
• More than 31 addresses at 9600 bps
• RS-232 connection, directly from Velocity to SNIB2 or over a leased-line or NET*MUX4 connection. (Not dial-up.)
• XBox upstream of a SNIB2

Defects fixed:

• Controllers reconnecting every 20 minutes fixed [Also requires Velocity Pollingengine.DLL and Pollingengine.INI files, dated 03/27/07] - Defect 255
• Controllers at large sites with globalized user management were not responding to downloads in a timely manner during peak periods and appeared to be non-responsive, despite their online status and event traffic. Increased the size of command queues to allow credential and command downloads to operate during times of high event traffic - Defect 267 (see also Recommended Practices, first item)

• IP address is now written to flash memory when a SNIB2 is reflashed. This allows you to set an IP address on a SNIB2, use the SNIB2 reflash feature, unplug the SNIB2 from power and send it somewhere else; the "Cold Start" feature will use the flashed IP address as its default.
• LEDs reassigned to indicate data transmission trouble, firmware reflash, etc. See "SNIB2 Troubleshooting Guide" for explanation of LED light patterns.
• 19200 bps no longer available.  9600 bps setting allows addresses 1-63 instead of 1-31. 38400, 57600, and 115200 continue to allow addresses 1-63. (Note that NET*MUX4 is still limited to 9600 bps.)
• RS232 support officially released
• XBOX support officially released. CCM and SNIB2 Firmware download works, including SNIB2 emulation of a SNIB1 downstream from an XBOX.
• SNIB2, Rev D has gone into production
• Download Command Queue increased in size, it's now 24 times as big as it used to be.
• Downloads of credentials, configurations, and command sets will go down to the controllers even if they are very busy with globalized user transaction messages.

• We do not recommend stopping and starting the services during peak traffic times. When there are many events flowing though the system, it is difficult to get all of the controllers online - RP 267
• Large installations should reset the default value of the SNet host timeout (located in the Communications tab of the Controller Properties window in Velocity) from the default value of 10 seconds to a number higher than the number of controllers on the loop - RP 250, 256