The invention provides a method and
system for fault-tolerant communication. It utilizes three
wide area networks, including the
cell phone network,
the internet and the
telephone network (PSTN). The method and
system monitors the wide-area networks and sends warning messages if they cannot be accessed from a local site. Primary failure conditions relate to the access and use of the three wide-area networks. Secondary failure conditions include power outages. The possible fault conditions include: ‘telephone out’, ‘internet out’, ‘
wireless radio out’, ‘power out’. If these failure conditions are detected, the method and
system alerts the user and redirects voice,
text message, and
data traffic via a detour over a different wide-
area network in order to avoid that failure.A method and system has been disclosed that routs information over one of multiple networks in a fault-tolerant manner. In case of network failure, detour routers allow the start-detour routers to switch the information flow over another network to an end-detour
router, where the information flow is switched back to the originally-intended network.
Cell radios are utilized, as well as telephones and
the internet to provide redundancy and fail-over under ‘telephone out’, ‘internet out’, ‘
cell phone out’ conditions. The method has particular strengths in supporting communication even with dynamically assigned addresses, thus assuring that remote users receive monitoring and alarm information in a timely manner.