How does Continuum synchronize a person's current area across controllers?

[Product_Support]

Issue

How does Continuum synchronize a person's current area across controllers and what happens if a controller is offline at the time of synchronization?

Product Line

Andover Continuum

Environment

• All Continuum controllers that support physical access control
• CX9900
• CX9702
• CX9680
• ACX5720
• ACX5740

Cause

Understanding the synchronization process can help with troubleshooting issues.

Resolution

1. Upon processing a valid access at a door the controller sends out a Personnel Update message to all peers controllers as well as down its Infinet for the benefit of ACX7xx field devices.
2. Note that the message is sent out to ALL controllers that have been taught regardless of whether they are doing access control or not or whether they contain a distributed copy of the personnel object.
3. The update personnel message includes the following information
   • The time the update message was built
   • The ID of the door where access was granted
   • The handle ID of the personnel object that was granted access at the door
   • The handle ID of the area the person was granted access to
   • The time access was granted
4. Upon receipt of the message, the recipient controllers performs a find by ID of the personnel object, if found the object’s current area is updated otherwise the message is discarded.
5. The recipient controller must acknowledge receipt of the message, if it does not, the sending controller retries 3 times, if a controller is offline and misses the update the corresponding record in its database will be stale, this in turn may cause entry-egress and/or anti-passback not to operate correctly until the next update message is received.