Carrier Ethernet

There is perhaps no better advertisement for a company than word of mouth.

In this testimonial video, Jack Elmore, telecommunications manager of Northeast Power in Missouri, explains why the power company decided to use RAD Data Communications (News - Alert) for its Carrier Ethernet services.

“We are the transmissions, we own the substations and transmission lines in our area. There are six GNTs in Missouri. Associated Electric is the generation arm, one tier of the three-tier system,” Elmore explained.

Northeaster Power is a one-tier in a three-tier electric system in Missouri that supplies energy to eight distribution cooperatives in Northeast Missouri and southeast Iowa.

“When you take in all the meters that these distribution cooperatives have, we have 62,000 meters in 21 counties,” Elmore said.

According to John Kroeger, dispatch manager at Northeast Power, the operation of its SCADA (supervisor control and data acquisition) system relies heavily on its live data to provide power to its customers.

“It’s absolutely essential that we have live communications with all of our outlying stations,” Kroeger said. “We cover about 10,000 square miles, so we need live data in that whole area, status updates as quick as two seconds, live update, and analog is four seconds. Communications is the backbone of what we have to deal with.”

RAD was chosen because it complemented Northeast Power’s efforts to convert its existing microwave TDM network over to a fiber-based Ethernet network. Northeast Power uses RAD’s Megaplex 2100 and 2104s to carry legacy DSO circuits for two-way radio and also for RTU circuits for neighboring utilities.

“Megaplex allows us to take that up to the Ethernet move that across the network, drop it back out and hand it off to the neighboring utility,” Elmore explained. “The neighboring utilities that we’re carrying across the Megaplex are still using 1,200 baud modems on the ports on the RTUs at those locations where we have the Megaplex-2104s.

RAD’s Megaplex-2100 multi-service access multiplexer is a single-box solution designed to groom, aggregate and transport multiple broadband and narrowband data and voice services over copper, DSL, fiber, wireless or satellite circuits. Northeast Power currently has 13 Megaplexes in service.

“The cost per circuit, or DSO since the company is using a layer two Ethernet network, the Megaplex was a less expensive option than having to take it down from SONET down to a T1 or DS3 and then down even further,” Elmore said. “We can go straight from the Megaplex right on to our layer-two Ethernet and roll that traffic anywhere on our network.”

A modular, integrated multiservice access multiplexer, the Megaplex-2104 supports dedicated data, digital and analog voice, ISDN, video, and LAN services over n x 64 kbps, single or dual E1 and T1, DSL or Ethernet uplinks.

Elmore said what he likes best about RAD’s Megaplex product are cost, features and remote access it offers, as well as the customer support it receives from RAD. All Megaplex products are under warranty.

“It allows us to take any circuit, anywhere on our network, and deliver it to any other port on the network that has a Megaplex box, and we can hand it off to a neighboring utility at our meet points,” Elmore added. “For the deployment, the feature sets, remote access, we get great support from RAD, if we had an issue, RAD came in and provided training to get us competent on using the equipment and programming it.”

As Northeast Utilities continues to deploy its fiber network, Elmore said the company will continue to explore RAD’s other Carrier Ethernet offerings.