[sbe-eas] National RMT relay instead of EAN testing

[Bob Reite]

I'll have to test it to make sure that it really works, but it was my 
understanding that on the TFT 911 units, 00000 was defined as "Entire 
United States".

On 11/25/11 5:16 PM, Jerry Mathis wrote:

>

> On Fri, Nov 25, 2011 at 1:33 PM, Dave Turnmire <turndave at isu.edu

> <mailto:turndave at isu.edu>> wrote:

>

>     On 11/23/2011 2:40 PM, Sean Donelan wrote:

>

>         ...A RMT event code still has a limit of 31 location codes, and

>         no national location code.  So you would need to run multiple

>         RMTs to cover the entire country, with oddball situations such

>         as NPR's squawk feed resulting in regions getting multiple

>         tests; or get everyone to re-program their EAS boxes to include

>         Washington DC FIPS code, with oddball situations for other local

>         Washington DC events leaking nation-wide, or other weird things

>         that no one expects. The FIPS processing would need to be change

>         throughthe entire daisy-chain. Not all encoder/decoders have the

>         same filtering capabilities.

>

>     This seems to be the heart of a number of issues for national

>     testing scenarios.  Who is in charge of FIPS codes?  NIST?  Can we

>     get an "all USA" FIPS code defined (or at least reserved or

>     permitted)... and then adopted by the FCC?  Updating software on

>     current generation EAS boxes is pretty easy... and other events are

>     likely to cause us to need to update them again in some fashion.  It

>     would seem wise to get rolling on making that change.  Perhaps other

>     events down the road will make it unnecessary... but it seems to me

>     that we are better off having that option in our toolbox than not to.

>

>     And while we are at it... we should by regulation resolve the

>     ambiguity on what "All ____" means precisely and how it should be

>     handled by the receiving device.  For instance, if an alert goes out

>     specifying "All Idaho"... (16000) some boxes will consider that a

>     match for any FIPS code that is within Idaho (16005 for instance).

>       For other boxes, they will ONLY consider it a match if their box

>     has the specific "All Idaho" Fips code listed in its

>     filtering/forwarding configuration.  That kind of ambiguity can

>     cause the EAS system to fail and should be resolved.

>

>     Dave

>

>

>

>

>

> Good grief. Talk about a problem with a simple solution.

>

> My Sage box has an option when selecting "Locations" that says "All FIPS

> Codes". It worked well when we received our recent National EAN test.

>

> If we want a genuine numeric FIPS code that covers the whole nation, two

> good possibilities come immediately to mind.

>

> First: "00000"

> Second: "99999"

>

> Personally, I like the first one.

>

> If this is really a problem, then let's recommend this and push it

> through. It'll also be a good lesson in just how much red tape the

> Government really generates.

>

> Isn't there a Murphy's Law that says something along the lines of, The

> simpler the task, the more bureaucracy is required to implement it.

>

> --

> Jerry Mathis

>

>

>

>

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