The NetBotz 420 appliance can monitor business-critical assets through various sensors and a CCTV camera. It could, for example, be used to detect extremes of heat and humidity. The 420 is NetBotz's mid-range device, aimed at smaller datacentres and remote offices, although it could also be used to protect rooms containing valuable materials sensitive to temperature and humidity. It comes in two models, a standard 19in, 1U, rack-mountable unit and a wall-mounted version.

We reviewed the latter, which had a single USB 1.1 port, a serial port, an RJ-45 10/100Mbit/s LAN connection, an audio jack, and connections for a Compact Flash card slot that can only be used for 802.11b Wi-Fi, GSM/ SMS wireless modem or PPP modem cards. Unfortunately the LAN connection does not yet support the 802.3af Power over Ethernet standard.

The onboard CCTV camera on our test model supported a resolution of 640x 480 pixels in 24bit colour and a maximum rate of 20 frames per second. The onboard sensor pod fitted to The NetBotz 420 could monitor temperature, humidity and airflow and could pick up audio activity.

We configured the device manually through the serial link on our laptop, although such connections are becoming rarer and perhaps NetBotz ought to consider configuration through the USB port.

After logging-on we set the option to pick up an IP address automatically and gave it a hostname, although the intrinsic hostname was netbotz02A109, the last six figures being the lower half of the NetBotz MAC address. We then installed the local console on a system running Windows 2000 Professional.

We plugged the device into out LAN and it picked up an IP address, after which we were able to browse to the management interface. The 420 can support Internet Explorer version 5.5 or later, Netscape Navigator 4.79, 6.00 or 7.02 and Mozilla 1.3 or later on all Microsoft's currently supported desktop operating systems and NT 4.0, as well as Red Hat Linux 7 or 8 and Solaris 9. The local console automatically picked up our NetBotz 420 and we could see our lab remotely over the IP connection and monitor people via the CCTV camera. The camera has motion sensor software that can be used to trigger email alerts which can contain captured images.

It was simple to configure the system to email us if set temperature or humidity thresholds were exceeded. We also configured the system to send an on-screen alert to our Windows desktop system if other parameters we had set were exceeded. Adding an 802.11b wireless Compact Flash card or a GSM card would allow some redundancy to be built into the system.

We were able to monitor various parameters, such as humidity and temperature, on screen, but not simultaneously, and there was no provision for locally storing camera images. Users requiring this capability would need the larger model, the NetBotz 500, which has local storage.

There is provision for an extra four external sensors - for example for external temperature and humidity sensors - and third-party sensors can also be used.

Contact: NetBotz 0800 389 5101

Price: £1,580 + VAT