EAS expert Richard Rudman blogs that FEMA has a plan for how stations will get domain names or IP addresses that stations need to program in to their CAP EAS encoders/decoders, which will then “poll” the federal Common Alerting Protocol message aggregator. That’s how primary stations will get their EAS alert messages to be re-transmitted across the daisy chain.
Rudman says Antwane Johnson, division director and program manager for FEMA IPAWS told him: “A PIN will be assigned to each of the approved EAS equipment vendors. To receive a PIN, each vendor will need to email FEMA IPAWS at: [email protected] requesting the PIN and the structure of the Atom feed URL.”
Once final security checks have been completed, FEMA IPAWS will update the EAS community with the release of the domain names to be used by the broadcaster community, states Rudman.
Johnson and FEMA IPAWS colleague Manny Centeno are slated to speak at an EAS session next Friday morning at the Radio Show in Chicago. “EAS Now and the Future” will include a demonstration and discussion on how to prepare an EAS device to receive CAP. The session begins at 8 a.m. in room A/B at the Hyatt Regency Chicago.
The FCC’s Sept. 30 deadline for stations to have CAP-compliant EAS equipment installed still stands.
