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Reserve Your Seat TodayNew York City Transit (NYCT) needed carrier-grade, always-on monitoring to support a major upgrade of its subway communications backbone. DPS Telecom NetMediator devices were selected to forward alarms from the new fiber-optic network while supporting legacy protocols, helping NYCT maintain 24/7 operational visibility.
| Industry | Public Transit (Subway) |
|---|---|
| Company Type | Transit Authority |
| Geography/Coverage | 188 subway stations across Manhattan, Queens, Brooklyn, and the Bronx |
| Primary Challenge | Maintain 24/7 monitoring and rapid response for critical communications and control systems, including legacy alarm protocols |
| Solution Deployed | Alarm mediation and forwarding from the upgraded fiber network to dual-redundant monitoring sites |
| Products Used | NetMediator; IAM-5 (backup alarm management) |
| Key Result | Carrier-grade alarm visibility with NEBS compliance and a practical path to integrate TBOS/TABS legacy equipment during migration |
It is difficult to imagine a more demanding environment for telecommunications equipment than the New York City subways. Carrying over 4 million passengers on an average weekday, the subway system places heavy demands on internal signal, control, and communications networks that must run 24 hours a day, every day of the year.
To increase capacity for future services, NYCT undertook a proactive project to create a new network for the 21st century.
The $141 million project upgraded a key fiber optic network connecting 188 subway stations across Manhattan, Queens, Brooklyn and the Bronx to an ATM/SONET voice and data network. According to NYCT Senior Director Warren Hochman, the new network would enable NYCT to offer new passenger services.
"This network will bring us into the future and provide better service both to our user departments and the public," said Hochman. "The project is going to have a big impact on our customers - we'll have an enhanced public address system, an enhanced MetroCard system, and enhanced safety."
"We needed a telecommunications-type alarm system that was carrier-grade, NEBS-compliant, and able to handle legacy protocols."
Hochman added that the new network would create an infrastructure ready for future, high-bandwidth information technologies. "This is a network that we can use now and in the future, with additional bandwidth for new technology," said Hochman. "Now we have new IT and data transport needs. And in the future we'll be using CCTV video equipment, and we'll need more bandwidth for that."
Hochman said that the future video network would be used for a variety of applications, including security, passenger safety, and estimating passenger loads.
Delivering these services depends on high system reliability. For NYCT, that meant implementing a network alarm monitoring approach that could identify trouble conditions quickly and support 24/7 response.
"Basically, all our systems are critical," said Hochman. "Signals, control, power systems, emergency telephones, emergency communications, third-rail connections. We have to know immediately if a network is going south, and we have to be able to respond 24/7."
NYCT's monitoring needs included a variety of alarms. "We have power, environmental, security, critical, major, and minor alarms, and analog information like telecom room temperature," said Hochman.
After evaluating available monitoring equipment, NYCT chose the DPS Telecom NetMediator to forward alarms from the new fiber-optic network. Hochman said the NetMediator provided the right combination of physical robustness and legacy support.
"We needed a telecommunications-type alarm system that was carrier-grade, NEBS-compliant, and able to handle legacy protocols," said Hochman. "We are migrating off legacy equipment, but there's some TBOS and TABS equipment that we want to retain."
"It's very important for us to have a NEBS product, and so we first looked at the NetGuardian. Then after a meeting with Eric [Eric Storm, DPS Telecom executive vice president of sales] we discovered that the NetMediator had TBOS and TABS, and that it was a simple, soft migration to integrate them."
In practical terms, the NetMediator served as a protocol-translation and alarm-forwarding layer for the upgraded network. This type of mediation is commonly used when organizations need to keep proven legacy telemetry in service while modernizing transport and supervisory systems. DPS Telecom designs these solutions to preserve alarm fidelity (severity, point identity, and state) while improving how alarms are presented and transported to higher-level systems.
Alarm data from the NetMediators is forwarded to dual-redundant sites in Manhattan and Brooklyn. At each site, alarms are collected by a Telcordia master with a DPS Telecom IAM-5 serving as a backup system.
For network operators, this kind of architecture provides multiple layers of operational assurance:
When you need carrier-grade behavior and migration-friendly integration, DPS Telecom RTU and alarm management solutions are designed specifically for always-on infrastructure like transit, utilities, and telecom networks.
With NetMediator selected for the project, NYCT implemented a monitoring and alarm-forwarding layer aligned with the reliability requirements of a 24/7 subway environment. The solution also supported a soft migration approach by accommodating TBOS and TABS equipment NYCT wanted to retain, while fitting within NEBS-driven requirements.
When voice and data services ride a shared transport backbone, faults can cascade quickly into operational impacts. Alarm monitoring helps operators identify failures and degradations immediately so they can restore service fast.
Many long-lived infrastructure environments still rely on established telemetry and alarm standards. A mediation device can accept those alarm streams and forward them into newer supervisory systems without forcing a rip-and-replace change.
NEBS requirements are commonly used to qualify equipment for telecom-grade environments. For operators who require NEBS-aligned equipment, it is a key screening factor during product selection.
It is deployed close to the network elements to collect alarms (including legacy interfaces) and forward them upstream using the format required by the master system, improving interoperability during upgrades and expansions.
Do you have questions about the NetMediator? Give us a call at our toll-free number and talk to one of our specialists. They'll help answer any questions you may have.
Get a Free Consultation - or call 1-800-693-0351 to speak with a DPS Telecom expert about monitoring, legacy protocol integration, and always-on network alarm visibility for your own project.
