A practical migration path to utility network modernization

As a power utility communications professional, you face many challenges when it comes to building or modernizing your utility – from finding replacements for obsolete equipment to guaranteeing the performance of mission-critical systems, all while ensuring security in the face of continuous cyber-threats.

Perhaps you’re just getting started on a new network and don’t know where to start? If you need to build, upgrade or expand your network, which path should you take – remodel or rip-and-replace? When asking these questions, it’s important to partner with a business that can provide modern, affordable networking solutions to ensure the best evolutionary migration path for complex, mission-critical communication networks.

Ultimately, you need a network that provides reliable, secure, scalable, managed and performance-guaranteed solutions. Some specific services you’ll need include:

• Service provisioning
• Traffic management
• Timing synchronization
• Distributed network functions virtualization (NFV)
• Time-division multiplexing (TDM) migration
• Performance monitoring
• Security
• Fault management
• Various resiliency mechanisms
• NERC CIP compliance

Build, manage your network with lower latency, greater resiliency

When it comes to finding a practical migration path to utility network modernization, you’ll want to partner with a business that offers carrier-grade ethernet technology and can work with native packet networks. RAD Data Communication is one choice to consider for network modernization solutions.

Whoever you choose, by working with your solutions provider, you can design and manage the best migration path with simple, secure and resilient carrier ethernet solutions – helping you establish the best operational network.

Note: Packet switching is the alternative to circuit switching, which was once used for telephone networks. Packet switching is more efficient, cheaper to build, and more reliable than circuit-switched networks. Additionally, packet switching offers several fault-tolerant options to keep your network running in the event of a potentially disruptive event.

Your provider’s access to reliable traffic duplication technology for multiservice substation traffic will help you deliver all types of traffic over packet networks – and your new carrier-grade ethernet operational network – for lower latency and greater resiliency.

In new substations, for example, a gateway can convert legacy SCADA traffic to IP. To ensure teleprotection, distance and differential solutions can be converted from TDM to low-latency packet switched networks.

Finally, make sure you partner with a business that can offer security and SCADA firewall tools embedded in its solution to secure mission-critical SCADA traffic. Your security partner can then backhaul distribution automation and smart metering applications over any infrastructure – helping you find the right network migration strategy.

Simpler than you think: A practical migration path to utility network modernization

When you’re upgrading or expanding your utility network, remember to choose a partner that can provide service-assured networking solutions – the key to ensuring the best migration path for complex, mission-critical communication networks.

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