Views / News – Blog

Keeping yourself and your business safe …

It certainly is a troubling time with the rapid spread of the Coronavirus sweeping the world.

It’s no exaggeration that for most people, nothing quite like it has been experienced in living memory. There’s a lot of confusing information around and the advice seems to keep changing on a daily basis. This graphic found posted on twitter by @TheLoff provides a sensible guide to being careful …

Businesses in general are also experiencing an extremely challenging situation, testing the most robust of #BusinessContinuity plans. Again from twitter, this summary posted by the @Cabq Economic Development Department, provides an overview of the tips and resources they have put together for businesses and organisations navigating through the Coronavirus …

@yellowsbestltd our mission is to assist with ‘Keeping Customers Operational’. We’re keen to continue to provide #solutions and #services – let us know if we can help!

Most importantly, stay safe!

Further reading and advice:

WHO – Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak

NHS – Coronavirus (COVID-19)

GOV-UK – COVID-19: guidance for employees, employers and businesses

Coronavirus: How to track the virus spread across the world as cases reach 180,000 via @CNET

Legacy mobile phones – Nokia 6230 & 2610

When phones got small (before they went big again)

In technology terms it seems a lifetime ago, now that large and ever-increasingly powerful ‘smartphones’ are commonplace, but it wasn’t so long since the trend was for mobiles to get smaller and smaller …

The evolutionary beginnings are clear, mobile phones started off as ‘bricks’: heavy, not very portable and limited in use. So the target became to make them ever smaller whilst cramming in as much functionality as possible.

The pinnacle of this development was just about reached with the Nokia 6230, a ‘feature phone’ which boasted a clock, calendar, calculator, music player, radio, photo and video cameras and a few basic games, even a limited internet browser, as well as texts and phone calls of course! A colour screen too, admittedly small (2.5cm square) and low-resolution by today’s standards, but with a battery that would last days not hours providing long talk and standby time. All squeezed into 10x4x2cm package; quite remarkable back in 2003.

Nokia 6230

This was about as small as phones got, and the small-size-format was so successful that it carried on like this for a few years, as illustrated by low-cost ‘entry’ devices such as the 2610 from 2006. Almost exactly the same size and weight, benefiting from improved screen and build but missing a camera – then still considered a ‘premium feature’, now so common place it’s hard to imagine any phone without one. Almost all of today’s phones are much wider, taller but thinner – how times have changed!

These mobile phones show off the relatively recent past of technology development, built to survive the harsh environment of the home of the Finnish manufacturer. So now, 15 or so years later – these ‘legacy’ models are still in working order, having out-lasted the company that made them! 

Much has since changed in the world of mobiles, such that they’re not even used much as just ‘phones’, and Nokia’s phone business itself came and went, though now being revived by HMD Global. Despite promoting smart phones such as the ‘flagaship’ Nokia 9, it’s also interesting to see the ‘re-introduction’ of some ‘classic’ small-size-format phones, such as the 3310, harking back to those early beginnings.       

@YellowsBestLtd we’re here to help #business customers maintain and keep operational “legacy” products and #enterprise equipment, as well as newer #systems, so let us know if we can assist by sourcing and supplying spares, repair and support services to ensure #technologies continue to serve and perform. Please get in touch to discuss your Management Services and Solutions requirements; we look forward to hearing from you.

Merry Christmas

@YellowsBestLtd we would like to thank our Customers for your enquiries and orders throughout this year, as well as our Suppliers for your support.

We’re pleased to have been of assistance providing services and solutions. Now into our fourth year of trading, we appreciate your continued interest and support, and look forward to continuing our business relationship in the New Year ahead.

Wishing a Merry Christmas to you and your family.  

RadiFlow – Cybersecurity Solutions for the Industrial IoT

A portfolio of comprehensive yet simple security solutions to protect critical assets is produced by RadiFlow.

Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems, used for controlling and monitoring remote operations in critical infrastructures such as power utilities, oil & gas, water and more, often extend across multiple remote sites, allowing automation devices to be controlled from the control centre. 

Cyber threats to SCADA systems have in recent years been on the rise. Terrorists and criminals have set their sights on critical infrastructures that utilise SCADA systems due to these systems’ inherent vulnerabilities and the huge potential to disrupt civilian life and may cause high financial losses to the utilities. 

Radiflow’s security tool-set validates the behaviour of both M2M applications and H2M (Human to Machine) sessions in distributed operational networks. 

Radiflow’s security solutions are available both as in-line gateways for remote sites and as a non-intrusive IDS (Intrusion Detection System) that can be deployed per site or centrally.

A Complete Security Solution for SCADA installations 

Visibility – Radiflow’s iSID Intrusion Detection System (IDS) automatically learns the network topology (links, protocol and devices) using passive scanning. Any new activity is highlighted on the GUI. 

Protection – Radiflow’s IDS and Secure Gateways protect the SCADA networks from a variety of cyber threats such as network scanning, infected RTU and technician activity. 

Compliance – Radiflow’s security products help make networks compliant with major security standards: NERC CIP version 5, NIST SP 800- 82 V2, ISA 99 and IEC 62443. 

About Radiflow – founded in 2009 as part of the RAD group, a family of ICT vendors with over $1Bn in annual revenues. Radiflow’s security solutions, introduced in late 2011, have been successfully deployed by major utilities world-wide, and validated by leading security research labs. Radiflow’s security solutions are sold both as components within global automation vendors’ integrated end-to-end solutions, and as standalone security solutions by local channel partners. 

@YellowsBestLtd seeks Solutions and provides Services to support Customer requirements to maintain and keep operational critical infrastructure networks. Please get in touch to discuss how we can be of assistance.

Cyber Security challenges and solutions for Utilities

Industry Background and Future Trends

For many years Electricity, Water, Oil and Gas Utilities as well as Transport companies have required bespoke, robust, dedicated network critical infrastructure solutions with high availability and reliability. Historically, these tended to use bespoke well-proven technologies aimed at providing key functionality and high availability, with redundancy, protection and long service life favoured over ‘cutting-edge’ performance. These aspects are still important, but the drive towards modern, efficient and interconnected operations, has resulted in the adoption of mainstream Internet functionality and movement from TDM to IP technologies.

In the past, the very nature of the deployed bespoke systems has meant that security issues didn’t arise, since wider threats didn’t apply. A case of being safe by being unknown. But with the adoption of Internet technologies, along with the growth and increasing sophistication of cyber-threats, Utilities and other private network companies are needing to apply Information Technology (IT) security solutions tailored to their Operational Technology (OT) systems. 

The issuing of the NIS directive by the European Union Agency for Cyber Security has raised the profile of this topic and generated the needed drive towards the implementation of the required solutions.

October is Cyber Security Month, so it’s an ideal time to find out more …

@YellowsBestLtd seeks Solutions and provides Services to support Customer requirements to maintain and keep operational critical infrastructure networks. Please get in touch to discuss how we can be of assistance.

Solar Power – eCharger UPGRADE

Project Re-cap

Last year’s project, detailed here, built a charger that collected and stored solar energy for use by an eBike, also for charging additional Li-ion or Ni-Cad batteries for other equipment as well as powering LED lights for illumination of the work space.

These 4 main elements were put together to create the solar charging ‘system’: Solar Panel, Charge Controller, Battery, Inverter. The resultant assembly captures energy from the sun via the solar panel, ‘conditioned’ by the controller and stored in the battery. This therefore provides an ‘off-grid’ 12V DC power source, or via the inverter as 240V AC ‘mains’ subsitute.

Experience from use

What wasn’t certain at the time of the project construction was how much energy would be available to be captured (estimates indicated sun 2-3 hours per day, weather and time-of-year dependant), how much could be efficiently stored and what would be needed to charge the eBike (understood to require around 3-4 hours for a full charge) and/or for the other uses. 

It had been assumed that there would be sufficient sunlight during summer days to adequately charge the storage battery, but at other times of the year the energy might be lacking, requiring additional solar panels for more energy generation.

The experience gained from use indicated that more solar panels were not needed, as enough energy was being captured, resulting in a fully charged battery (indicated by the charging stopping, despite it being sunny) when not being used for eBike charging. What was noticed however was that if the eBike had been used for a medium to long ride, requiring moderate to high charging afterwards, that insufficient energy was available from the storage battery to power the inverter (indicated by an audio alarm) long enough to fully charge the eBike.

The resulting conclusion was that the storage capacity was needed to be increased, to capture more sunlight energy to be available for charging purposes.  

Storage Upgrade

It was decided to purchase a second 12V 110AH 800CCA AGM-type battery, of identical make and specification as the original, thereby doubling the storage capacity (although since its advisable to allow for discharge of only 50% of the stated rating, the total energy available is taken to be 110AH). This compares with the capacity of the eBike battery, which is 36V 11AH (400WH).

Twin AGM batteries

It is important to note how additional batteries are added to a solar energy system. The choice is between series or parallel connection. 

Series would result in a doubling of the operating voltage to 24V. This would bring some advantages in terms of lower current rating for wiring gauge with the same power, and a simpler daisy-chaining method of connection. However, this is only possible if the other system components are rated for 24V operation.

For this upgrade, it was chosen to add the additional battery in parallel, thereby keeping the operating voltage at 12V (suiting the controller and the inverter) whilst providing more current. The parallel connection requires the battery terminal connections to be separately wired to the inverter and controller connection points, and for safety an additional fuse was added so that each battery is separately fused to protect against a short-circuit.

Twin batteries and inverter in use

Conclusions

Limited experience to date of the upgraded 2-battery-storage Solar power system finds that there is now sufficient energy available to completely charge the eBike even after a long ride, without incurring a low-energy warning from the inverter.

Charge controller with 2A input

The conclusion is reached that due to the usage pattern of occasional eBike charging compared with the daily solar energy collection, that more battery storage is a more appropriate choice over more solar panel energy generation. This is re-enforced by the fact that on poor-weather days, although there is a lack of available solar energy, the eBike is unlikely to be used, so the energy usage requirements are also low!

eBike fully charged

If will be interesting to monitor the performance of the upgraded system through the seasons of another year.

@YellowsBestLtd we are always looking to expand our portfolio services for #business development and #enterprise support, and increase the mix of solutions for #sustainable systems and maintenance of new and legacy #technologies and products for our customers. Please get in touch to discuss your requirements; we look forward to hearing from you.

Nokia ‘Dynanet’ PDH Telecoms Spares

Continued Supply of Spare Parts – Surplus and Refurbished Items

@YellowsBestLtd satisfies customer product sourcing requirements for current and ‘legacy’ equipment technologies.

Despite the recent ‘rampdown’ announcement by DNWP for the ‘Dynanet’ range, we should be able to continue to supply refurbished and surplus equipment for as long as required, but the likely effect of the discontinuation of production will be to squeeze the availability of remaining stocks, with a consequential impact on pricing.

Hence, it is recommended that if there is anything that might be needed, it would be best to consider purchasing it in good time to ensure availability of items and best prices.  

Here is a list of the main items immediately available from current stocks, though there may be a few additional parts that can be supplied. Hence, please check and if you do have any requirements, please let us know. We look forward to hearing from you.

Part NumberDescription
24204TPSO H/W Module
CC 24002DB2 Branching Unit, B2 2×2 Mb/s 75 ohm
CC 24011DB2 2 Mb/s Switching Unit, X2 75 ohm
CC 24101DN2 Interface Unit (IU2) 2×2 Mb/s 75 ohm
CC 24111DN2 Control Unit (CU) 75 ohm
CF 24186DN2 19″ Subrack
CF 24186.09DN2 Subrack 19″, grey-L91 EMC
CG 24170DN2 Bus Power Unit (BPU)
CG 24171Extended DN2 Bus Power Unit (EBPU)
CU 24013Data Interface Unit (DIU) 2M, nx64k: G.703/704, 75 ohm
T30506.0917-slot DYNANET Subrack
T30851.02Subrack Power Adapter (SPA)
T37870.01NDM ACM2 19in 17-slot subrack
T37871.01NDM DN2 19″ 17-Slot Subrack
T37882.01NDM DC Unit (NDUe)
T37882.02NDM DC Unit (NDUe)
T37885.01NDM Ring Generator
Ring Generator – T37885.01
Part NumberDescription
T37889.01NDM Backup Unit (NBU)
NDM Backup Unit – T37889.01
Part NumberDescription
T65520.01ACL2 RM DC Power Gen
T65580.01ACL2i PF GEN Line Terminal Card
ACL2i PF GEN – T65580
Part NumberDescription
TA 21513Optical Line Terminal Repeater 2-8 M, 1300 nm LED MM/SM
TA 21516Optical Line Terminal Repeater 2-8 M, 1300 nm LASER SM
TC 21101DM34 Mux Card
TC 21301DM8 Multiplex Equipment, 75 ohm
TC 21705Supervisory Substation
TC 21710.01TMS Adapter
TG 21261Ring Generator 25HZ 15W
TU 21122.5Data Interface Unit (DIU) 48..64k V.11 10ch
TU 21124Data Interface Unit (DIU) NX64k V.11/V.35/X.21 2CH
TU 21124.05Data Interface Unit (DIU)
TU 21125Data Interface Unit (DIU) 48..64k with sync, X.21
DIU X.21 – TU 21125
Part NumberDescription
TU 21205Channel Unit SUB/SUB
TU 21206Channel Unit SUB/SUB
Channel Unit Subscriber / Subscriber – TU 21206
Part NumberDescription
TU 21215Channel Unit SUB/EXCH
TU 21216Channel Unit SUB/EXCH
Channel Unit Subscriber / Exchange – TU 21216
Part NumberDescription
TU 21234.20Channel Unit E&M/VF-P, 10 CH, 20 E&M CH
TU 21236.10Channel Unit (CU) 8ch E&M/uP: 2xe&m/vf
TU 21255.01Channel Switch, 4 PORT
TV 21640.08Power Interface Adapter DC

‘Dynanet’ Telecoms – ‘Rampdown’ notice

Phased Discontinuation of Production – 31st May 2019 – 31st January 2020

The production of the ‘Dynanet’ family of PDH Transmission telecoms products, first introduced by Nokia over 20 years ago, and continued in recent years by DNWP, is finally being ended.

This product range has well served Public Operator and Private Network Customers across the Telecoms, Utilities, Transport and Public Safety markets with high availability mission critical infrastructure, and indeed some networks are continuing to provide good operational service. 

Essentially almost all the old equipment items, with a very few exceptions such as the TPS64, are being completely discontinued in a phased way according to these milestones, which have already commended:

31st May 2019 – DM8 Multiplexers, DF2-8 Optical Terminals, RPSA

31st October 2019 – DM2 Multiplexers, Subs/Exch & VF Cards, DN2 IU2, Service Terminals, V.28/V.11 DIU

31st January 2020 – DB2, DN2 CU & BPU, G.703 & V.110, DIU, Ethernet I/F, Ring Gen, NDM 19” Subrack, NDA

@YellowsBestLtd satisfies customer product sourcing requirements for current and ‘legacy’ equipment technologies.

Should you wish to read the full ‘ramp-down’ notice and know more about obtaining equipment before it is no longer available, then please get in touch.

Mobile Communications for Professional Users

Mission Critical Technologies

For many years, pioneering mobile communications technologies have been developed and implemented to serve the operational needs of professional users, such as public safety, utilities and transport organisations.

Initially based on radio technologies predating the public cellular networks and offering bespoke functionality, these were implemented as individual regional networks. Technology evolved from Analogue to Digital and deployments increased from regional to national rollouts.

We are now on the verge of next generation of mission critical communications with the arrival in the UK of the Emergency Services Network (ESN)

A brief history of PMR

When mobile communications were in their infancy, major organisations with mission critical requirements chose to build their own ‘dedicated’ networks to ensure availability of service. The users of such systems had operational requirements that shaped the technology developments, and gave rise to features such as Press-to-Talk (PTT), instant call set-up, encryption, user priority, 1-to-many and group calling. 

Initially such networks were analogue-based and collectively known as ‘Private Mobile Radio’ (PMR). Inter-operation between systems was rarely possible, though one standard that did evolve was MPT1327 ‘Trunking Radio’, implemented by a range of vendors such as NOKIA and TAIT. Individual organisations built, operated and maintained their own infrastructure.

The next generation of technologies were digitally-based; one of the most widely adopted standards was TETRA. A break-though was the standardisation of the ‘air-interface’ permitting the inter-operability of user mobile terminals with infrastructure from a range of manufacturers, such as NOKIA and Motorola.

In the UK, two nationwide networks were rolled out, AIRWAVE for public safety users and DOLPHIN for professional users. The latter of these hit financial difficulties and was closed. Other regional networks were deployed, such as that on the London Underground, whilst other organisations continued to maintain their analogue-PMR systems.  

ESN is coming

As on show at this year’s @TechXLR8 expo, the Emergency Services Network (ESN) is set to revolutionise professional mobile communications in the UK again, ultimately replacing the existing Airwave TETRA network and offering existing and updated services.  

Essentially, acting as an overlay onto EE’s 4G network, the software from Motorola solutions will deliver an advanced mobile communications experience, including the PTT, group-call, priority and security features demanded by professional users. 

The new service will bring PMR into the modern era with ruggedised mobile-phone-like user terminals providing advanced data capabilities, offering high quality colour-displays, GPS-mapping and location-based services. 

A huge investment in development and rollout is taking place, which will result in additional network capabilities and coverage provided by 500 new base-station sites. The new network will serve the needs of the Police, Fire, Ambulance services as well as other professional users such as local authorities and utility services.

Supporting existing and future requirements

@YellowsBestLtd satisfies new and ‘legacy’ requirements for the operations and maintenance of systems and networks by providing services including consultancy, technical support and hardware repairs, and solutions, with the supply of functional replacements, spare part items and software support.

We would be keen to hear from you regarding your existing or future operational needs; please get in touch.