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Announcements, News, and other Items of Interest

Sage Alerting Systems will demo Multi Language support for CAP and EAS messages, including Spanish and French Canadian, in booth C2546 in the Central Hall. Details are on our events page.

FEMA is sending an RWT every Monday at 11:05am for each U.S. time zone. If you did not receive the RWT, and your Sage ENDEC shows that you were connected to IPAWS, then you are running the old version 89 release. You need to be running version 89.2.

Version 89.2, released in June 2012, fixed a problem where the ENDEC would sometimes not break a link to IPAWS if the link connection didn't set up properly. This happened to a small number of users and seems to be related to the local lan architecture. It caused the ENDEC to stop polling, and report that CAP was offline. As a side effect, the 89.2 release also fixed a problem with a condition that wasn't occurring at the time, that of getting a "504 gateway timeout" error from the IPAWS server. Sometime in mid December, those server errors started popping up, or at least now happen often enough so that people are noticing them. It the server timeout occurs at a particular spot in the CAP fetch process, the version 89 release would not retry the fetch, and the alert would be missed. You should install this release.

We didn't notice this gateway timeout problem on our Sage test units, because they are all running the 89.2 release, and version 89.2 will continue to try to download the alert until it is no longer present in the list of alerts from the server. Version 89.2 does not miss the RWTs, even if the 504 gateway timeout error occurs.

Long story short - if you are running version 89, please install version 89.2. If you are running version 88, then you need to install version 89, then install version 89.2. If you are running version 89.2, you don't need to take any action. If you are running 89.2, and you do miss an RWT, email us.

If you missed any RWTs, be sure to note it in your official EAS logs, and note that the corrective action was loading a software update.

Version 89.2 fixes two problems, 1) the ENDEC will sometimes miss an alert if a gateway timeout error is returned by the IPAWS server, and 2) some combinations of ENDEC and routers, sometimes associated with ENDEC's on a WiFI connection, will result in the ENDEC not continuing to poll after a transient network outage. The ENDEC will usually recover from these on its own. We have seen a small number of cases where the problem takes several minutes to clear, or never clears on its own.

Read the release notes
and download the firmware.

Install only on systems that already have version 89 or 89.1.

Click the version button on the ENDEC's home page, look at the Board Rev x/nn line. If xx is greater than or equal to 89.2, you have the latest software as of June 30, 2012. If the ENDEC's home page says "CAP Status: OK", and you are receiving an RWT from FEMA every Monday you are connected to the IPAWS server.

The current version of the ENDEC software supports the IPAWS server. The release notes will walk you step by step through the installation. If you are a current ENDEC user, the update will take about five minutes, and if you haven't previously tried to add the IPAWS sever by hand, the install will automatically build the required IPAWS CAP settings. The troubleshooting section of the release notes will help you identify network problems such as DNS and gateway issues.

See the Task Sheets on the FAQ page for additional installation help.

FEMA is sending one alert per time zone every week day, though this will switch back to Mondays only on July 9. There are other several ways to tell if the ENDEC and the IPAWS server are communicating.

• The top line on the ENDEC's home page will show a CAP status, "OK" if all CAP servers are running, or "Offline" if any are not.
• A server by server summary is provided on the new "tools" page.
• A detailed set of statistics for each server is provided on the tools page.
• If a server is offline (meaning the ENDEC can't poll it), the AUTO led will flash on the front panel, and a message will be placed in the front panel buffer.
• The ENDEC will send an EMAIL message to the "errors" address list when a sever changes state from up to down, or down to up, with a few minutes of debounce so you aren't flooded by an intermittent connection.

If you are connected to IPAWS, and if FEMA sends an RWT to your time zone, you will see it on the ENDEC's log page if you have a filter that matches RWT and an originator of Civil Authorities.

It doesn't matter if your state has a CAP server or not, you'll still need to be able to receive the IPAWS messages. If you don't have any other way to get them (and many of you won't), you'll poll the federal IPAWS server. Some states are publishing CAP URLs, however, there is no standard method of delivering CAP messages. In many cases, the state, or Sage, or both will need to make adjustments to allow the ENDEC to poll the state server. Some states are sending CAP messages, but not in the dialect that the FCC requires. This will all be worked out in the coming weeks. For now, if you are polling the IPAWS server, you are FCC compliant.

The 5th Report and Order did require manufacturers of combined CAP and EAS equipment like the Sage Digital ENDEC to file Class II permissive change paperwork with the FCC. We did so on the day the new rules were published in the Federal Register, April 23, 2012, and received the offical grant from the FCC on May 21, 2012.

The Sage Digital ENDEC 3644 passed the FEMA CAP assessment test in 2011. Read more about it at FEMA's knowledge base site.

Sage and Global Security Systems have developed a complete end to end CAP origination, transport, and broadcast dissemination system. If you want to extend your CAP capabilities beyond the Internet, learn more about Sage and GSS.

If your ENDEC has a version less than 1.0h, please install the latest update.

Sage Digital ENDEC
Learn more on the products page.