Have you ever wondered how signals are sent from your alarm system to the central station that monitors your house or your RV?

Alarm signals can be sent by the phone line (which is the least secure method), private telemetry networks (very secure), cellular alarm modules (very secure), and now over the Internet (security is being determined).

Specifically the Internet module is wired into your alarm system control box, and it’s given an IP address and plugged into your router (cable or DSL). The allows signals to be instant. You can push a button on your burglar alarm system and the signal is at the central station immediately. This allows your security system to communicate with the central station every 60 seconds for line security and then this line security can be adjusted.

The Internet option is nice because a homeowner can install broadband and they do not have to install or pay for a phone line. One downfall of the Internet monitoring option for RV security and/or home alarm systems is that you need a UPS for power on your modem and router and if the Internet goes down so does your alarm communication.

Internet monitoring is light years ahead of using the phone line for your alarm, but an alarm installer has to be computer literate with IP setups and protocols and at the present time there aren’t very many skilled installers out there in setting up Internet monitoring for you burglar alarm security system.

Currently, broadband is the direction in which most alarm companies are moving, but before broadband burglar alarm security systems were handled similar to this:

An alarm system requires a means to send signals to a central location. Years ago there were direct lines and partial loops provided by the phone companies. This method needed countless small stations throughout the country which became very expensive and required hard wiring from this point to that point.

Then the digital signals took over. Digital signals were easy to set up, cheap, but also much less secure. Digital signals started in the mid to late 1970s and were then branded as affordable, thus companies flocked to sell alarms to the middle class American. What none of them told you was all a burglar had to do was cut the phone line and this turned off the digital signal.

Digital Burglar Alarm Security Systems then started to become more available and affordable. This brought about companies who opened offices selling $99 dollar systems. While at the same time the company’s existing offices were selling the same alarm systems for $5,000 on up. Sounds fishy, doesn’t it? It turns out that if a customer wanted one of the companies security signs to display at their RV or their house, the customer had to pay $99. If a customer wanted a system that would actually work and protect them, then the customer had to pay the $5000 and up. It turned out that this was because alarm companies are valued on their monthly recurring revenue not what they sell a system for.

As the years progressed, the industry moved to lessen this security risk by means of protecting the phone line better and adding things like 24 hour supervised testing. However, the big players in the burglar alarm security system business didn’t see this route as profitable enough and some offered even lesser protection to increase their bottom line. This had a negative effect on what some of the mid-sized to small alarm companies could offer because they had to lessen the protection that their customers really needed to compete with the larger alarm companies.

At the same time cities and counties found out that burglar alarm security systems can be extremely expensive, because police and firemen were chasing countless false alarms. False alarms that were called in by alarm security system central stations who couldn’t differentiate between the real and false alarms and thus wasted municipal resources. Many cities now charge for false alarms, and you need a permit to have an alarm system.

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