Define the Establish Connection Timeout for a PSTN Pager Channel

Each PSTN Pager Channel has an Establish Timeout property that you can use to define how long Geo SCADA Expert will wait for a response to an 'establish' message.

When a message is to be sent from Geo SCADA Expert to a pager device or mobile telephone, the Pager Driver initializes the local modem, and then the local modem and remote modem establish a connection. Once the connection has been established, the Pager Driver may wait for a defined amount of time (the Post Connection Delay, see Define the Post Connection Delay for a PSTN Pager Channel), before sending an 'establish' message to the remote paging service.

The 'establish' message sent is used by Geo SCADA Expert to confirm that the correct connection has been made—when the connection has been established, the pager service will send a response to the Pager Driver. The response is used by the Pager Driver to confirm that the device at the other end of the connection is the expected device.

If the paging service does not respond to the 'establish' message sent by the Pager Driver within a specific amount of time, Geo SCADA Expert deems the call to have failed. This results in the failure being logged in the Event Journal as a 'Failed to send pager message' entry for the relevant Pager Service. The amount of time that Geo SCADA Expert will wait for the response to the 'establish' message is defined by the Establish Timeout property in the Pager Channel configuration.

To define the Establish Timeout for a PSTN Pager Channel:

1. Display the Pager Channel Form.
2. Select the Channel tab.
3. Either:
   • Use the browse button feature of the Establish Timeout field to define the amount of time that Geo SCADA Expert will wait for the paging service to respond to an 'establish' message.

   Or:

   • In the Establish Timeout field, enter the amount of time that Geo SCADA Expert will wait for the paging service to respond to an 'establish' message. You need to enter the time in the OPC Time Format, for example, 25S for 25 seconds.

     The default setting for the Establish Timeout is 25 seconds. This is appropriate for many situations. However, some paging services may take longer to respond.

     If you are experiencing failed messages, and the various modem related Pager Channel configuration settings are correct (Baud Rate, Line Speed and so on), you may need to increase the Establish Timeout. In this situation, we recommend that you examine the
     I/O log for the Pager Channel—from the entries in the I/O log, you may be able to determine whether the difficulties are being caused by the Pager Service failing to send a response to the 'establish' message.

     We recommend that you try increasing the Establish Timeout in 5 second increments.

When you have defined the appropriate Establish Timeout setting, you can either proceed with the Pager Channel configuration (see Configure a PSTN Pager Channel), or you can save the configuration (see Saving Configuration Changes in the Geo SCADA Expert Guide to Core Configuration).

Further Information

Logging and Monitoring in the Geo SCADA Expert Guide to Server Administration.