Introduction to PI Interface for TCP Response

The PI Interface for TCP Response (TCPResponse) measures the availability and response times of various essential services that are part of a TCP/IP network. In particular, TCPResponse allows the user to determine the response times of the following servers:

• HTTP (Web) servers

• SMTP, POP3, and IMAP (Mail) servers

• FTP servers

• DNS (Name resolution) servers

• Microsoft WindowsNT/2000/XP Terminal Servers

• OSIsoft Data Archive

The TCPResponse interface program also obtains the actual result (and not the response time) of a DNS operation, and the interface determines the time it takes to load a particular page on a Web server that requires username/password authentication. TCPResponse stores these response times into OSIsoft's Data Archive, enabling user access to long-term historical data as well as short-term current information regarding the performance of various servers. Therefore, TCPResponse assists network managers in proactively managing their networks.

The TCPResponse interface program runs on all operating systems Microsoft currently supports. Unless otherwise noted, the remainder of this document uses the term "Windows" to refer to all these versions. TCPResponse requires Data Archive version 3.2 or higher. However, OSIsoft strongly recommends the use of Data Archive v3.4.370.x (or higher) together with PI API v1.6 (or higher). The reason is that a PI point's InstrumentTag attribute often will need to hold more than 32 characters. The interface does not require any special hardware. A standard network interface card on the Windows machine is sufficient. The direction of data flow is uni-directional, and the interface supports input PI points only. The TCPResponse interface does not support UniInt failover.