Introduction to the ICMP Driver

This driver is a stand-alone driver. It provides additional functionality to enable Geo SCADA Expert to interface with specific supported systems or devices. To interact successfully with such systems or devices, you need to:

Install and run the driver
Ensure that the driver is licensed
Configure the required database items and settings on the driver
Ensure that the database items (and any database items on which they depend) have valid, saved, configuration and are 'In Service'.

Intended Audience

This guide is designed for use by all levels of user:

Engineers who are responsible for configuring ICMP points in Geo SCADA Expert
Operator-level users whose duties require them to use the ICMP driver features
System administrators who are interested in statistics and diagnostics information relating to the ICMP driver.

Document Scope

This guide describes:

How to configure ICMP-specific points in Geo SCADA Expert.
Driver-specific aspects that are of interest to operators
Driver-specific aspects that are of interest to system administrators and engineers during any fault finding on the system.

The Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) is one of the core network operations and maintenance protocols. The ICMP protocol is often used by operating systems to send diagnostics messages indicating, for instance, that a remote device cannot be reached.

The Geo SCADA Expert ICMP Driver utilizes the ICMP’s Ping Tool functionality to detect whether network-connected remote device(s) are reachable. It does this by sending ICMP Echo Request Messages to each remote device, and expects those devices to each respond by sending back an ICMP Echo Response message. If Geo SCADA Expert does not receive a response within a specified time period, it can re-attempt to poll a device for a specified number of times. Should it still receive no response, it will set the relevant point to State 1, indicating failure.

Geo SCADA Expert also uses ICMP for hot-standby link monitoring. Such monitoring is completely independent from the ICMP driver and does not require the ICMP driver to be running or installed on Geo SCADA Expert. (For information on ICMP hot-standby link monitoring, see ICMP Polls in the Geo SCADA Expert Guide to the Server Status Tool).

The ICMP Driver documentation explains how to configure ICMP-specific points in Geo SCADA Expert (see Configuring ICMP Points in Geo SCADA Expert).

It also explains:

Driver-specific aspects that are of interest to operators (see Using ICMP Specific Actions)
Driver-specific aspects that may be of interest to system administrators and engineers when investigating any unexpected system behavior relating to the driver (see ICMP Specific Status Display Attributes, and see ICMP-Specific Driver Log File Options).