🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <5041@s3.ireq.hydro.qc.ca> Alain Martineau writes:
>	I read in 'Communications Week' that there is the equivalent of GOSIP
>for the utilities industry. Nobody I know ever heard of that. Does anybody
>know anything about it ? 

  You're referring to the Utility Communications Architecture (UCA)
  written by Andersen Consulting for the Electric Power Research Institute
  (EPRI). As far as I can tell, it is a restatement of the OSI stack
  per the Manufacturing Message Specification profile.
  
  The EPRI contact I have is:

	Mr. Wade Malcom
	EPRI Project Manager
	3412 Hillview Avenue
	Palo Alto, California 94304 USA

>We try to get hold of the standards but there
>seems to be many organisations with competing standards, IEEE, X/Open, COS,
>ANSI, CCITT, OSF. It is confusing. 

 Yes, OSI standards are confusing to the novice.
 But don't worry; when you get more experience, you will achieve total 
 bewilderment, like the experts. :-)

Good Luck

Cliff Bamford               Internet:cliff@hq.af.mil 
San Diego:(619)689-8921  Washington DC:(703)370-3034

   martinea@ireq.hydro.qc.ca (Alain Martineau of Hydro Quebec,
                              Centre de Conduite du Reseau) writes:
>  ...trying to write the specifications for a new national control center.
>  ...So we try to incorporate in our specs as many standards as possible,
>  we really need an OPEN system;
>  we don't want to repeat this 70 million dollars purchase every ten years.

Historically, the ISO committees have been more concerned to create
standards with maximum generality than to design implementations
that perform at high speed or withstand real-world stresses.  Since
you seem to have significant real-time performance concerns, the
lengthy negotiation phase that most OSI protocols go through to
establish a connection are a bottleneck that could become a pain in
the neck.

If you were to use your own physical media, your choice of protocols
could reflect more closely the requirements of the problem than if you
have to use whatever is available on somebody else's network.

Therefore, instead of using X.25 links or any other shared-resource
network, have you thought about getting your transmission people to
install fiber-optic ground wire (FOGW) along your high-voltage
transmission corridors?  This puts the circuits right where you need
data, and you can install fiber-optic transmitters and receivers (and
other active hardware) of your own choosing.  The bandwidth is
typically limited by the electronics, not by the fiber, so future
upgrades in capacity would not require stringing new cables.  

Such a design would give you complete control over the physical media
for your data collection, giving a margin of confidence that you
cannot have when your time-critical data are sharing a wire with
somebody else's traffic.

Of course, if you absolutely must have constant data flowing at a
constant rate, you would be well advised to arrange for back-up
circuits, which could be dial-up links on the switched network.  Or
perhaps you have non-co-routed redundant paths in your power-
distribution network so that the FOGW links could also be routed for
failsafe operation.
-- 
....Richard S. Shuford  | These opinions here are held neither by the
....shuford@cs.utk.edu  | University of Tennessee nor by the National
....BIX: richard        | Football League.