IP Telemetry with GPRS

What are TSC and IPT?

TSC and IPT are protocols which enable incoming and outgoing connections via GPRS by means of an external server.

TSC stands for TAINY Switching Center, and includes a proprietary protocol. It is employed in some environments for transmission of serial data via GPRS networks in order to avoid the problem of missing Availability of terminal devices in conventional GPRS networks. TSC was further developed as IPT (IP telemetry) to meet the DIN standard. The two protocols IPT and TSC both cover the same functional range to the farthest possible extent, however they are not compatible.

IPT stands for IP Telemetry, and is a protocol which is specified in the DIN 43863-2 standard. This standard has still draft state at the time of writing. In creating the IPT standard, large parts of the TSC protocol were adopted. The protocols are not compatible, however they work in the same way. Therefore we will make do in the following with a description of the standardised version IPT.

IPT operating mode

In order to be able to use the IPT protocol all participating devices must have the IPT protocol stack integrated. The following components are required:

• Field device with IPT stack (in the drawing on the left, e.g. INSYS GPRS serial 5.0)
• IPT server (switching center), a permanently available server on the Internet which tunnels all data within one IPT system
• Control station computer with IPT stack or a second field device IPT stack

Immediately after the system is started the devices connect to the so-called switching center, which tunnels all connections. A device or a control station computer that tries to establish a connection to another device transmits this request to the switching center. This server then releases the tunnel to the desired device provided that the device is logged on. Subsequently, a quasi-transparent data communication may be run through the established tunnel.

INSYS supports the protocols TSC and IPT in the devices:

• INSYS GPRS 5.0 serial
• i-modul GPRS 3.0 serial

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