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Smart Grid May Also Carry IPv6 Traffic
itwbennett writes "Kevin Fogarty is blogging about new specs outlined by the National Institutes of Standards and Technology (NIST) that outline the requirements for 'any network designed to carry data instead of just electrons.' What's needed, in short, is 'a Common Information Model for the format of data in the network, interfaces to allow it to go from one device or substation to another, exchanges between control centers and communications protocols that will add security to the net.'"
Surely data traffic is going to grow much faster than the grid, and so it makes more sense to separate the two?
And isn't high frequency electrical noise carried over high power lines a threat to our health?
http://areyoutargeted.com/fighting-back/public-relations/making-your-case/eh-and-health/
what could possibly go wrong? I can't wait to see the next stuxnet
It carries "waves". The individual electrons don't really get very far, but the 60Hz electromagnetic wave that carries the power, that goes far.
All this is, is, hey, we carry a powerful 60Hz signal, how about we carry lower-power, high frequency signals too? And all the associated complexity of actually sending and receiving high frequency signals, a devil of many details.
--PM
Broadband over powerlines keeps popping up. It isn't going to happen. Yeah, it sounds like a good idea on paper... You've already got all those copper lines carrying electricity, why not throw a signal in there and do double duty? Except that it just doesn't work. I don't know how many times I've seen it here on Slashdot.
And IPv6? Not any time soon. Maybe not ever. Yeah, I know, we're running out of addresses. NAT is horrible. I know. And I'd love to roll out IPv6 today just for the hell of it (because I don't have enough work to do already). But folks have been talking about IPv6 for years now.
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
Just wondering if these new standards comply with Net Neutrality? Or we are to assume they will?
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
I swear I've heard this before... ... Time Passes...
oh yeah, phone lines... I think it went something like this:
Exec 1: We already have lines run, why should we bother with a second set of lines for control signals say from pay phones?
Exec 2: I can't see of a reason, let's do it
Exec 1: we all get bonus for saving ourselves $BIGNUM bucks.
Exec 2: Sweet!
Captain Crunch: *2600Hz whistle* now can I get free long distance calls?
Execs 1..N: FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU.....
hence the development of SS7.
Now if we can get this, which network is going to be "phoning home" to report electrical usage? even if the traffic is sufficiently encypted, and authenticated, what happens when someone decides to start DOSing their electrical meter? that and, eventually, and i stress eventually, any encryption can be defeated. it's only a matter of time before someone figures out how to fake electrical readings from the new smart meters, or better yet, hacks and publishes the hack, for certain brands of meters.
I will not give in to the terrorists. I will not become fearful.
First, the power grid has not been dumb. It has been pretty smart for decades. The Smart Grid is a major upgrade, but it isn't a scratch start from a dumb basis.
The existing grid includes sophisticated control centers and sophisticated microprocessor-based protective devices that sense faults and make corrections. Power grid equipment runs into problems all the time (such as equipment failure, storms, and curious animals) and handles them most of the time without putting the lights out.
The grid has always had two infrastructures: an electrical infrastructure (power lines, transformers, generators, etc.) and an information infrastructure. Decades ago, the information infrastructure was rudimentary. Now it is much more extensive. With the Smart Grid it will be even more extensive and will have much more interface to systems at the customer site. However, major upgrades will be needed to integrate massive increases in intermittent renewable energy such as wind and solar, to manage pluggable electric vehicles, and to vastly improve energy efficiency, reduce costs, and improve reliability. That will require standards. That is what the Smart Grid is doing.
Work on some of the Smart Grid standards, including the ones recently forwarded to FERC for rulemaking, started as long as 25 years ago. Those standards need to be deployed. Others will need to be developed.
Second, the Common Information Model is an abstract data model that covers the utility enterprise. It has little or nothing to do with transmitting data over power lines. That is called Broadband over Power Lines (BPL) and (like real estate having three factors in prices -- location, location, and location) it has three problems: interference, interference, and interference. To make BPL work you have to solve the interference problem.
I currently work developing smart appliances and load reduction devices. The smart grid is about sending commands and control information to devices that consume (or generate power) on the grid. For example the Texas deployments use a wireless mesh network ( typically 900MHz) to communicate between electric meters, the meters then use ZigBee (2.4MHz) to communicate with devices with in the home. Typical communication is: the time, current price of electricity, future prices for electricity and load reduction commands. None of this information is sent over powerlines. Also the messages are only routeable in a very limited sense and they don't use IPv6 addresses.
Even if the messages did have IPv6 address, do you really think the electric utilities would allow fully routeable traffic on their networks? All the bandwidth would immediately be sucked up with bittorrent and script kiddies would be trying to turn on their neighbors air conditioner in January.
Many Smart Grids are already deployed with IPv6.
The Silver Spring Networks devices do, for one.
We've had them deployed over a year. 100% IPv6. Even in outlying areas where we cannot get direct fiber close enough for the mesh, we still use IPv6 tunnels over EVDO networks.
EE here.
I'm pretty sure TFA took something out of context. The smart grid (at the consumer level) has always required some form of communication. There's dozens of proposals for signaling methods, from voltage/frequency shifts all the way up to full-blown IPv6 mentioned here.
It is not meant to supplement/replace the internet. This is simply a way of communicating to each individual device. There is no (little) concern about security, because everything goes to your (hopefully) optional devices.
For example, a typical data exchange might be: ...
Substation: "Load is 80%, time is afternoon... Turn off/limit water heaters."
Your water heater: "Ok... Done"
Your toaster: "..."
Substation: "Load is 70%, time is afternoon... water heaters back on."
Your water heater: "Ok... Done"
Your toaster: "..."
This isn't exactly sending multimedia files back and forth at GB/s rates... but you would ideally like to support complicated messaging to hundreds of different types of appliances. The sheer number of devices is almost unfathomable, hence IPv6 is a worthwhile protocol if you want to address individual devices. The message protocol will/should be extremely simple though, so bandwidth could probably be in the sub-kBps range.
Again, security isn't a really important issue. Your power meter would monitor your energy usage and the commands being sent to your appliance. If your energy usage doesn't drop when it's commanded, there's no economic gain for you. Sure you could try and hack your power meter, but that's done anyway. The hack is going to be 'noisy' in the sense that some discrepancy will clue the power company in sooner or later. Something like your meter records a 2 kwH power drop, yet the substation's meter for your neighborhood doesn't see it. Even if you get away with something in the short term it's pretty irrelevant, how many people will risk getting their power permanently cut off over a few bucks a month?
Notice how the government talks about "customer" in the last decade? (Oh yeah maybe some of you haven't been alive this long)
You see it everywhere now. Look at the two fascist replacements of the FCC mission statement. Find the original FCC mission statement, compare them, you will instantly see where this smart grid is going, and why the spectrum is being mis-managed. They have changed "public interest" to "customer value interest" In other words, having ol joe in his garage who how to expose fraud or invent new energy can buy a new phone CHeaP! Bay-Bee What's being lost is ol joe's technology or project, or message or 1st Amendment. Here jo have two soup cans and a kite string, You have FREE SPEECH bay-bee! While if you look at broadcast in the "public spectrum" (that ol pesky original mission statement), it's 98% commercial owned! Which makes the FCC 100% mission failure. 2% of the spectrum for the military of course...
That's just one agency.
This crap is *****ng everything now!
Food - FDA and it's Codex
Elections - Electronic vote tabulation devices break the HUMAN public's chain of custody.
Spying - Telco's and FIOS splitters
Customer, Customer, Customer.
Why is any of this a problem? Why should you care about an anonymous post on slashdot?
I'll tell you why. These people swore oaths. To protect the constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic. Now the Constitution is intermittent. The intermittent constitution of 2010's world allows corruption and oath breaking to infest, and be hidden with state secrets. There's no government of the people, when the people can't choose or control government. It *****ng doesn't say, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press(CORPORATE OWNED MEDIA); or the right of the (CUSTOMER)people peaceably to assemble, and to petition(E-FILE, E-MAIL) the Government for a redress of grievances."
Furthermore, there's no such thing as customer oversight.
Make sure the 'Smart Grid' is interoperable with the Internet and all data networks.
Simplifies things for the attackers, doesn't it?
How about they design some security into it first, eh? Just sayin...
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Why is no one proposing that old wifi modems, routers, cellphones and other wifi devices be reconfigured to support ad-hoc network for at least community based FREE network coverage?
It would seem to me that this would be the most resilient and have the greatest up-time in a power outage or other emergency.
Also file sharing would be much easier and not congest pay based network services.
Anyone could then allow a portion of traffic to go out to through their own Internet provider at their discretion.
Since this network is not isolated like the corporate networks, the traffic flow would not require expensive transfer between networks when transferring between community based hosts. ie: no internet would be needed for local file sharing, VOIP. Also local caching would be much greater and effective.
My guess is that pay based ISP's would not like this as it would reduce their value as minimal local network access would naturally be free.
But in this economy and in the name of recycling and reducing waste and expense, I think the government (speaking for the people) should support this (enforce ISP's to provide hardware to allow for it after end-of-life).
"Any network designed to carry data instead of just electrons" will not only be locked in a specific protocol standard, but will also be designed "for security" - that is, to only allow "good data" and not "evil data". The definition of "good" and "evil" will of course be up for sale to the highest bidding MAFIAA.
What a depressingly stupid machine.