Hardware is often blamed when noisy supply lines are the real cause of networking problems.

Jan 2000 Fieldbus & Industrial Networking

One should not automatically suspect the system hardware when experiencing intermittent network problems. Many network faults are caused by irregularities in the mains power supply, like transients, sags, outages and frequency variations. Even with a UPS, these irregularities often pass through unfiltered to the system, where they can cause troublesome server failures, resets and system crashes.

Before checking the system hardware, it is worth taking a look at the mains power supply. Fluke's new VR101S voltage event recorder provides an effective means to do just that. It plugs into a mains outlet and monitors the supply over time. It can detect, log and time-stamp up to 4000 voltage variations that fall outside pre-set limits.

Using the supplied EventView reporting software and optical interface cable, the user can download a complete history of voltage events that occurred while the recorder was plugged into the mains supply. This gives an overview of mains quality during that period, enabling the pinpointing of potentially troublesome events. Armed with that information, decisions on the right course of action can be made to protect the network from future problems. The voltage event recorder is compact and easy to use at any point where a power supply problem is suspected. It only has to be plugged into the suspected mains outlet. A flashing LED indicates the occurrence of out-of-limits events which have occurred, giving the option of down-loading the data to a PC.

The network is one of an organisation's most valuable resources. Power quality should not be left to chance.

Spescom MeasureGraph

(011) 266 1500

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