If you are using a U70 PL-20 network interface to communicate with LON power line devices, you can optionally enable power line repeating to extend the range of the power line communication, for example in street lighting and other outdoor lighting networks where there is a long distance with high power line signal attenuation and noise injected between the SmartServer and the furthest SmartServer. Power line repeating requires LON DMM (see Switching LON Management Mode) and power line repeating support in all the power line devices to be provisioned by the SmartServer. When you enable LON power line repeating on a SmartServer, the SmartServer is limited to a single U70 power line interface and you cannot add any additional network interfaces. You also cannot use the SmartServer routers. If you use a remote network interface (RNI), then the RNI will only see packets that the SmartServer can see. That is, the SmartServer most likely will not be able to see packets between repeaters, or between a repeater and the end device.
You can configure the SmartServer for the following power line repeating modes:
- Off – LON power line repeating is disabled.
- On (with Automatic Discovery and Optimization of Proxy Chains) – LON power line repeating is enabled with automatic discovery and optimization of the required repeating paths. This setting is sometimes called dynamic repeating.
- On (with Static Chains) – LON power line repeating is enabled without continuous optimization. The initial discovery process is the same as for the previous option, but the SmartServer does not attempt to optimize the repeating paths after the initial discovery. You can enable this option while you are making changes to the network to eliminate the overhead of repeating path optimization.
Once you enable repeating static/dynamic, do not revert to non-repeating. Doing so requires that you use the Reset Database action in the System Configuration page to delete all settings and devices, except IP address settings and rebuild your network.
Once repeating is enabled, you can change between static and dynamic at any time.
Save your changes by clicking the Update button.