Teleprotection with MPLS ethernet communications — Development and testing of practical installations

Today's information technology (IT) advancement is driving both non-operational and operational data communications within a substation towards Ethernet-based communications networks. As a result, protective relay engineers are finding that the telecommunications industry is transitioning from legacy teleprotection channels such as leased circuits, Time Division Multiplexed Synchronous Optical Networks (TDM SONET) multiplexers and rings, over to Ethernet packet-based wide-area networks (WANs). The current, most common WAN packet routing technology is Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS).