Substations have gotten extra complicated with larger calls for positioned on the community and connectivity. To deal with these challenges, our clients requested us to ship a next-generation routing answer that builds upon our 10+ years of utility routing experience – and we’ve fulfilled that request with the brand new Cisco Catalyst IR8340 Rugged Router.
The Catalyst IR8340 is way more than a brand new model of its predecessor, the Cisco 2010 Related Grid Router. The Catalyst IR8340 is an all-new industrial routing platform that delivers highly effective and versatile capabilities. It meets the substation wants of at this time and its modular upgradability will meet future wants with ease.
Earlier than we dive deeper into the way it may help you meet the rising calls for in your substation, let’s talk about the background that led to this extremely succesful and distinctive platform.
Substation community operators are dealing with many challenges within the operational panorama. One among these is the rising complexity of balancing the big range of latest energy era property (reminiscent of photo voltaic and wind) with an equally complicated consumption mannequin (reminiscent of improve in electrical car charging). This real-time balancing act requires operators to join extra property for elevated visibility and management. Very often it calls for greater bandwidth with decrease latency in a confined operational footprint.
In truth, many utilities require extra capabilities in the identical footprint of their networking infrastructure to allow them to cut back prices (rack house, energy, cooling) and simplify the substation community complexity to help troubleshooting.
Because the utility grid turns into extra automated, the reliance on the supporting communications community infrastructure turns into much more crucial to the reliability and effectivity of the grid itself. This improve in grid digitization additionally enlarges the cyber safety menace floor. Regulators and utilities attempt for an ever-increasing safety posture as many conventional substation safety approaches come up brief as a result of lack of asset visibility and centralized safety coverage enforcement.
Lastly, with this enlargement of related property within the substation and the fixed drive for operational effectivity, utilities are challenged on :
- Deploy networking gear simply at scale and with centralized configuration management to scale back discipline visits.
- Handle and function these new networks via their lifecycle and guarantee highest reliability.
- Safe the substation and supply asset reporting the place required.
To resolve these challenges, utilities are working towards full-scale grid modernization — together with substation automation. So, it’s not a matter of if however when and how they are going to improve.
Based mostly on greater than a decade of worldwide collaboration with the utility {industry}, we’ve got developed options to digitize and automate substations together with the brand new Cisco Catalyst IR8340 Rugged Router.
It gives excessive efficiency routing (WAN, SDWAN), switching (substation LAN), safety, timing, and edge compute, all from a single platform. It’s particularly designed for the efficiency challenges of any substation automation structure with a small footprint and ruggedized kind issue (licensed to IEC61850-3 and IEEE1613).
The Catalyst IR8340 is a part of a brand new Cisco validated method to substation automation and administration. Along with the just lately launched Cisco Catalyst IE9300 Rugged Sequence Switches, the routers present a validated structure that unifies the substation LAN and WAN – including the efficiency, safety, scale, and administration required for the modernization of the substation.
5 necessities for the next-generation substation
Persevering with on from our earlier weblog, let’s overview the important thing factors that deal with 5 crucial capabilities for a contemporary substation on the subject of the Catalyst IR8340:
- Efficiency at scale. Utilities are requested to attach extra property at greater velocity with extra property streaming extra information (e.g., synchro phasors). The Cisco Catalyst IR8340 Rugged Router gives 2 WAN ports and 12 LAN ports all inside the similar chassis with additional modules supported to broaden the WAN choices. The Catalyst IR8340 has dramatically larger throughput on the WAN and LAN ports (assessments have proven approx. 950Mbps for each LAN and WAN ports carrying combined visitors) than its predecessor, the CGR2010. The router additionally gives routing and switching capabilities because it’s a single built-in platform. As well as, the Catalyst IR8340 additionally delivers IP/MPLS help to the substation edge and helps Cisco’s SDWAN answer as a ruggedized router.
- Asset visibility and cyber menace detection. Utilizing the built-in edge compute capabilities of the Catalyst IR8340 as a safety sensor, Cisco Cyber Imaginative and prescient permits utilities to achieve an correct, real-time view of their substation property (visibility and vulnerabilities relevant) immediately inside the substation networks, particularly when paired with Cisco Catalyst IE switches. This gives operations employees with East-West visitors visibility throughout the substation LAN, in addition to North-South visitors visibility through the WAN to the management heart. It additionally displays community exercise and flags anomalous behaviors that would point out malicious exercise—all with none exterior sensors requiring devoted SPAN port visitors connections.
- Enterprise-grade administration and automation. Substation operators are more and more managing their substations as scaled IT property, using the deep information and capabilities of Cisco’s industry-leading community safety and administration instruments. The Catalyst IR8340 runs Cisco IOS-XE and builds upon this utilizing Cisco DNA Heart for automation, assurance, and compliance, in addition to leveraging Cisco security measures reminiscent of TrustSec, MACsec, 802.1x, VRF, VLAN, and Versatile NetFlow to the substation LAN through the built-in switching ports. As a Catalyst router it additionally delivers Cisco SD-WAN to the substation, so you’ll be able to securely simplify deployment and administration, in addition to save prices by configuring SD-WAN to pick out essentially the most related information transport path for various kinds of visitors.
- Help for {industry} commonplace protocols. The Catalyst IR8340 helps many protocols related to the substation, together with IEC62439-3 PRP & HSR for redundancy (the Catalyst IR8340 is performing as a PRP RedBox or HSR DANH), Cisco REP for ring topologies and a number of spanning tree variants. The timing module gives a direct GNSS connection and gives IEEE1588 PTP timing as a Grandmaster for the substation LAN, supporting C37.238 energy profile and IEC61850-9-3 PUP. It helps broadly used substation protocols reminiscent of IEC61850 (Layer 2 GOOSE, SV and layer 3 MMS), IEC104, DNP3, and Modbus, which are important to substation operations. The Catalyst IR8340 natively helps serial connections through the serial interface module to supply both protocol translation (IEC101 to 104 and Serial DNP3 to DNP3 over IP) or tunneling of serial information throughout the community (utilizing TCP/UDP Uncooked Sockets characteristic) permitting clients to help legacy serial property whereas migrating to ethernet enabled units. The Catalyst IR8340 additionally gives help for T1/E1 WAN connections through a community module for integration into current SONET/SDH transport environments to ease the transfer to IP based mostly applied sciences.
- Utility internet hosting and edge compute. Substation operators are in search of methods to run purposes regionally of their space-constrained substation rugged environments. The Catalyst IR8340 is designed with this want in thoughts and with help for Cisco IOx to energy Cisco Cyber Imaginative and prescient and the utility’s personal purposes inside the substation. Examples embrace digital RTUs, safety purposes, and plenty of extra.
Benefits of utilizing the Catalyst IR8340 for subsequent era substation automation
- The Catalyst IR8340 has one thing to supply for each IT and OT groups, with highly effective automation instruments out there to swimsuit both.
- The Catalyst IR8340 is a key part being validated as an integral a part of the brand new Cisco Substation Automation validated Designs.
- The Catalyst IR8340 gives connectivity and suppleness for now and the long run with 4 enlargement slots, so you’ll be able to add 5G, P-LTE, FirstNet, 450Mhz, and future connectivity applied sciences, or further storage or compute at any time when it’s wanted. Additionally, you will have 4 copper, 4 combo, 4 SFP LAN ports, and a pair of combo WAN ports on the prepared.
- The Catalyst IR8340 condenses a number of historically separate elements right into a single platform: WAN router, LAN switching with PRP/HSR/REP help, PTP Timing, and Safety (Zone Based mostly firewall, Cisco Cyber Imaginative and prescient Sensor).
- And it suits into the identical rack house because the CGR2010!
So, to your subsequent substation automation challenge, contemplate the Cisco Catalyst IR8340 Rugged Router and its versatile characteristic wealthy capabilities. You can begin with easy use instances for safe connectivity and allow further capabilities as your operational necessities evolve (e.g., enabling the Cisco Cyber Imaginative and prescient sensor, including substation timing by including the Timing Module or including personal or public mobile help through the vary of 4G/5G Modules).
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Cisco Catalyst IR8340 Rugged Router Datasheet
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