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The Telocator Network Paging Protocol (TNPP) was created by a committee of paging terminal manufacturers to become the accepted industry standard mechanism to move paging and other information between paging terminals regardless of manufacturer. Although it initially was conceived of as a standard means of moving information between dissimilar paging terminals, it is used widely to create networks of similar paging terminals. TNPP is a point-to-point digital communications protocol. It is used basically to ensure reliable delivery of information from one paging terminal to another directly connected paging terminal. But, routing information sent in each control packet, allows for the distribution of these packets to one or more network nodes. The primary purpose of TNPP is to move radio page requests within networks and between different carriers networks, but the protocol also allows non-paging information to be transferred. TNPP is used only under agreement between carriers, or information providers and carriers. It is not an open, public access protocol that anyone can use to link into a paging system. However, there are many public applications of TNPP. Several vendors have created products called TNPP gateways, which allow direct corporate access to the TNPP network. Since the advent of TNPP gateways, paging carriers are much more comfortable allowing private access to their networks. The gateways can provide a number of controls for the paging companies and also provide billing services. The big advantage of using TNPP is that a message packet can be inserted in the TNPP network and routed instantly to the proper city and paging terminals. TNPP is used to get information to satellites and to each individual transmitter. The huge advantage is the NO TRANSLATION or paging terminal record is required to get information to a pager. All the properties of the pager are sent at the origination of the message. This means that no labor is required to set up a pager on a system. This has many applications. For example, a paging re-seller or corporate user can buy BULK airtime from a carrier and purchase their own pagers. This gives a corporation ultimate control and the carrier an opportunity to sell some un-used air time. The air time approaches a "commodity". One example of using the TNPP Cap Page protocol is the Reuters Information System PocketWatch II product. Reuters buys Advisor pagers directly from Motorola. They program in CapCodes that they are coordinated with the carrier. The can program custom features into the pager such as mail drops, personal drops, custom beeping etc. They buy bulk air-time from MobileComm and presto, they have a custom information system. NTpage is the ONLY product of its class to implement TNPP. Your corporation can take huge advantage of this feature and lower you paging costs and create many custom information systems. For more information on the TNPP protocol, you can search the spec at http://www.pcia.com/protocol/links.htm NOTE: For troubleshooting the TNPP32.DLL program, see the Administrator program for setting up the TNPP log file. |
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