Configuring Your IP Devices

Note: Only All Sites Admins have full access to configuration.

IP Device Notifiers are devices that receive notifications, such as IP speakers. IP devices that trigger notifications, like panic buttons and sensors, are IP Device Activators. (See IP Device Activators.)

Once your IP device is plugged into your network, it gets its IP Address from a Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP), and auto-registers to UNP via the DHCP Option 72 WWW server value. IP devices display on the Endpoints page and are automatically available to assign to notifications as endpoints on the Manage Notifications page > Select Endpoint & Contact Selection section.

Common configurations are:

  1. Go to Configuration > Other Devices > IP Device.
  2. Click Settings to set how often you want the system to poll for new IP devices and update the list of devices displayed on the IP Device page.

    3. Note: Polling does not remove inactivate or retired devices.

Volume and text looping are configured on the Endpoints page for each IP speaker.

Important: You should not make changes to these settings unless specifically instructed to do so by Support.

IP request timeout

If your network is slow, you may want to allow more time for UNP to connect with speakers. The default setting is 5 seconds.

Rate limit count and time

Most customers will never need to adjust these settings. We recommend using the default settings unless you are trying to reach large numbers of endpoints (several thousands) in as short a time as possible. Adjusting these settings allows UNP more time to connect to endpoints to send notifications.

The settings work like this – within x amount of time, process n number of notifications to endpoints, where x=Rate Limit Time and n=Rate Limit Count.

Less rate time / higher rate count – decreases the chances of UNP connecting to all assigned endpoints within the given time frame.

More rate time / lower rate count – increases the chances of UNP connecting to all endpoints within the given time frame.

The optimal settings are the default values – Count=150, Time=500 milliseconds.

When a device is no longer used, follow the steps in the Decommissioned Hardware topic for the type of IP device.