Sending alarms using email? Here is an excerpt from a report made by the technical loss adjuster to ********************.

Company names and status have been changed but all other detail remains - copied with permission.

Introduction.

On the night of the 14th December 2010 a cash and carry warehouse in ***************** was broken into, the alarm had already been triggered 2 hours previously and the Police and Keyholders attended without finding anyone on site. The manager of the depot was unconcerned about getting his alarm reset as the property had CCTV surveillance.

The system was being monitored by a national CCTV surveillance company and although it had monitoring of the alarm line nothing was applied to the CCTV communication system (broadband).

"The alarm from the CCTV system was received at the alarm monitoring station at 12.18am, they acknowledged the alarm and the first video seen by their operator was timed at 12.21am - the event was monitored for 72 seconds and then logged as nothing seen.

We found that the CCTV and the alarm system was functioning correctly. When we tested the alarm triggering we could see that this was sending its alarm to the alarm control room within 30 seconds, however, on triggering the external detectors on the CCTV system we saw that there was a delay in transmission. Closer inspection of the system shows that the alarm is sent using SMTP.

We have contacted the supplier of the broadband (name protected) and have discovered that it uses DPI (Deep Packet Inspection) technology to control bandwidth and to filter messaging. There can be a delay of up to 6 hours on the delivery of SMTP traffic when peak demand dictates."

Whilst SMTP can be a virtual point to point delivery mechanism the ISP has the abililty to slow or delay mail packets. I think we have all witnessed this.

The system has been removed from SMTP transmission and is now on a fully polled connection compliant with BS8418 the Insurer has not paid the claim and the alarm company is being held responsible.