WAN modernization: An outstanding multiservice platform for real-time utility communication

Hitachi Energy’s FOX615 is a hybrid solution supporting traditional TDM (PDH / SDH) and

Multi-Protocol Label Switching – Transport Profile (MPLS-TP) – the latest standard designed

to address the new applications using packet-switched technology natively. The majority of

existing communication networks of power utilities are based on Time Division Multiplexing,

TDM, which allocates dedicated circuits to specific communications and thus guaranteeing

the required communication performance parameters such as bandwidth, latency, and symmetry.

New standards today are based on packet-switched technologies (e.g. IEC 60870-5-104 or IEC 61850)

and therefore integrate natively into a packet-switched MPLS backbone network.

Well known features of SDH networks were left behind when MPLS was originally created for

dynamic public telecommunication networks and implemented as IP/MPLS. That’s why an

enhancement of the standard was required, leading to MPLS-TP bringing back those missing

features from SDH to the MPLS world such as bidirectional and static channel routing or end

to end channel supervision using Operational Administration Maintenance (OAM).

FOX615 provides native MPLS-TP and SDH functionality as part of the hybrid approach implemented.