Network Access Overview for SimplySnap Cloud

What is SimplySnap Cloud?

SimplySnap Cloud is a cloud based application that unifies control and reporting across multiple Synapse gateways.

Best Practices

What is a Synapse Gateway?

A Synapse gateway is a specialized, hardened Linux appliance used to wirelessly monitor and control Synapse lighting controllers and sensor nodes. Each Synapse gateway comes standard with a 10/100 Ethernet port for management of the local web UI (HTTPS) via the customer LAN.

What communication is involved on my network?

All communications with the internet has to be initiated from the gateway, therefore no external connections can be established inbound. This prevents unauthorized access to the gateway from the outside. Below is a description of each outbound connection to the cloud servers used by a Synapse gateway:

SimplySnap Remote Connections:

SSH	TCP 22	tunnel.snap-lighting.com	Provides Synapse support team command-line access into customer gateways for remote commissioning and troubleshooting. This can be enabled / disabled at the customer’s discretion.
NTP	UDP 123	ntp.ubuntu.com	Used to synchronize local clock on gateways.
Config Sync	TCP 443	couchdb.simplysnapcloud.com	Used to synchronize configuration between Synapse gateways and the cloud.
VPN	UDP 1196	vpn.simplysnapcloud.com	Open VPN is used to push configuration to the gateways from the cloud interface. Also allows administrator access to the UI of each SimplySnap gateway from a single web domain.
MQTT	TCP 8883	a25n2uts2ytmw2-ats.iot.us-east-1.amazonaws.com	A lightweight messaging protocol used to communicate power and sensor data for SimplySnap connected devices to our web servers.