Dual Path Monitoring

hi the LRS joy from alarm grid and today we're going to talk about what dual path monitoring is now the systems that we offer most of them do have a dual path option on them what dual path is it means that the system has two methods of communication to signal outward today we're going to speak about the systems that we support on the Honeywell side and also the systems that we support on the alarm.com side as they both have dual path options they just work slightly different and it's better if you do know how your system actually does work on Honeywell most systems have a way to communicate over IP either Wi-Fi or Ethernet and when the system does have that option that's going to be the primary communication path on that particular panel many Honeywell systems also have a way to add in a cellular module to the system and with that installed with the primary communication path which is the IP set up if that cellular module is added on that's going to be the secondary communication path the reason those are called primary and secondary is that the primary communication path is faster as IP is faster than cellular but it's also less reliable than a cellular connection as the Internet service in any given area can be subject to interruptions and there's many other factors that can cause an issue such as the router in the house or tons of other things what if that Internet service or the internet IP path goes down the system is going to automatically switch over to the cellular path and containing a signal on Honeywell this is great because not only does it allow it to see keep signaling the Central Station but it lets you connect to the system remotely if you do have a Total Connect 2.0 account set up on your panel different panels have a different way that this looks over here we have a vista 21ip this panel has an onboard Ethernet jack and an onboard cellular communicator but with those both active it will use dual path monitoring it's going to use the Ethernet as the primary and switch to the cellular as the secondary now if you look over here the links panel this is an elf 7000 this can be very similar to the Vista system as you can install a module inside of it that lets you connect it to an Ethernet network it's just that if you do install the hard wired Ethernet module called the ilp5 you won't be able to install the cellular module in the system the reason I bring this up is because if you do want to use dual path on the Lynx system you're gonna have to install the Wi-Fi module and then install the cellular module you won't be able to use the Ethernet and the cellular at the same time and to see why that is I'm going to open the system up over here this is the cellular module that we currently have installed this is called the 3gl and it works on the AT&T 3G network the ilp5 which is the ethernet module this sits in the same area on the board and they can't both be in the system at the same time that's why so if you are gonna use dual path on your link system it's recommended well not only recommend it's the only way you can do it having the the Wi-Fi module installed over here and then having the cellular module installed over here now alarm.com also offers dual path monitoring it just works a little bit different on an alarm dot-com system when the IP and the cellular paths are both established is actually going to signal on both the communication paths and the signal that reaches alarm comm first is going to get processed and the other one's going to be discarded this is great because it's going to ensure that your system always is signaling on the fastest path available to two alarm comm and as soon as that signal comes in if the other communication path is down in that signal it's going to tell alarm comm that that is the case it works it's very similar to how Honeywell works they both work great for their application it's just that with alarm comm you're always going to ensure that the fastest signal is arriving to alarm comm there are some slight differences in the panels also up here we have the gc3 and right over here we have the IQ 2 these are similar with how they work with their dual path monitoring on alarm.com as both these panels have a built-in Wi-Fi module and they both can use cellular communication the IQ 2 has a built in cellular module whereas the GC 3 has a module that you have to add on but they both will work exactly like that in a dual path setup the GC 2 on the other hand you actually have to add on a device called the go bridge which allows it to interface with an IP network it doesn't have a built-in a Wi-Fi module and it doesn't have any other way other than that device to get it communicating on IP if you do install the go bridge on the GC 2 though you can use it in a dual path setup as this system lets you install and integrated cellular communicator right on the board that's pretty much how dual path monitoring works if you didn't have any questions feel free to head 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