News
New Oz Server
Doorbird now Faster with new Australian Servers
Thanks to the success of the brand in Australia and New Zealand, Doorbird has built a local server in NSW to direct the millions of local calls and notifications across its network. As the largest reseller of Doorbird in the southern hemisphere, we have been pushing them for years to introduce an Australian server.
If you’re not a techie, you might be wondering what this means…
Faster speeds: Faster notifications and less time before you can see and talk to your visitor, once they press the call button.
When the call button is pressed on your Doorbird intercom, your device reaches out to the server and says ‘Hey I’m Mike (It would actually identify with its MAC address but hey, we’re trying to keep this lite), I’ve got a call.”
The server would look up who has their smartphone linked to that doorbell, and send a notification and video to each phone. You and your crew would receive the notification, tap it to open the app, and wait for the video to start. Once someone presses the answer button to talk to the visitor, it then switches to a direct path between smartphone and Doorbird and no longer requires server participation.
To make things harder, Android and IOS require a security app of this nature to do a song and dance to the tune of ‘VPN encrypted tunnels etc etc’ to keep everyone's data safe, but this adds to the time it takes to render video on your screen.
Since its inception, the Doorbird servers have always been in Germany where the product is made. That’s fine for anyone living in Europe, but has been a bit of problem for us here in Oz. The reason why is that our countries internet pipe to Europe is woefully slow and inadequate.
But now that our Doorbirds can speak to a local server in Australia and not have to swim the ocean to Europe, that communication is much faster. How much faster? Testing to date has shown server communication to be 30 - 40% faster.
Previously, with good network and a good internet connection, from button press to video and audio on your smartphone would average 11 - 18 seconds. Now with the Australia server it averages 6 - 12 seconds. Still not enough time to catch that pesky courier who presses the button and runs back to his van, but short of standing next to your gate all day, there doesn’t seem to be a solution for that!
How and when you ask? Most new installs of Doorbird products from now will be directed straight to the new Australian server. All of the existing Doorbird devices in Australia and NZ will quietly be migrated over to the Oz server over the coming 2 - 3 months. Soon there will be an update to the app that will tell you which actual server your Doorbird is communicating with.
Psst… if you can’t wait for the auto migration, send us a friendly email with your units MAC address and we’ll get it migrated manually in just a couple of days.
Also on the down-low… expect news of a new product release in the next 1-2 months. The long-awaited ‘keypad only’ product will be arriving and will not only make a huge increase in range and reach of the Doorbird suite of products, but it will redefine access control and intercom for Australians who are security conscious, and love technology.
Talk soon.
