Empowering the power brokers - California Independent System Operator utilities network - Company Business and Marketing

Communications News, Nov, 1999 by Geoff Charest

"Instant" intranet created to support power-industry deregulation.

A truly free market requires unhindered, reliable, and equal access to information. Before California's recent deregulation of its electric power industry could become reality, a massive information-flow problem had to be solved. An extensive and robust network was needed to enable all parties in the deregulated environment to communicate easily and reliably with each other, in real-time. The obvious solution to the challenge was an intranet that every participating organization could equally access, regardless of size or location.

California created the California Independent System Operator (CalISO), consisting of power producers, utilities, and users interested in purchasing power, as well as marketers and others. The early stages of planning identified approximately 2,000 organizations that might eventually become involved with CalISO (e.g., as members, suppliers, etc).

Since the utility industry works under stringent requirements for availability, reliability, and redundancy in all systems, MCI Communications and MCI Systemhouse--later purchased by EDS E.solutions (EDS)--were selected to design and build the system. Each member of CalISO needed to be confident that the communication infrastructure would work reliably and not degrade or fail if network demands increased significantly or suddenly.

EDS was also responsible for designing, testing, and deploying the network, which had to be fully stress-tested before it went into operation. EDS needed to efficiently test the network as it was being built and deployed, as well as demonstrating that the final results would meet expectations.

There was one other not-so-minor specification: a system which most IT professionals estimated would take 18 months to build had to be fully operational in one-third that time. EDS had only six months to do the job--from the concept stages, through design, deployment, stress testing, and verification. Time was critical. "We could have bought anything in the world, except time," recalls Joseph VanBeeck, chief architect and managing director of EDS E.solutions' IT management solutions practice.

Fortunately for California power consumers, EDS utilized network performance testing software, Chariot, from a North Carolina company, Ganymede Software, that guided builders along the way and demonstrated that the network would be nearly "bulletproof" when it went on line.

Constructing a network like CalISO's, with total redundancy, is a nightmarish job. But Chariot enables users to analyze and measure how a network will perform, from the end-user perspective, before applications are deployed by measuring actual end-to-end throughput, response time, and connectivity of applications running on a network. These metrics describe the performance a real end user sees from an application, instead of just taking a guess or creating a projection that might or might not be representative.

Using Chariot, EDS stress-tested the network's major components quickly and easily, and then fine tuned thousands of redundant paths to demonstrate their reliability under an increased load. After determining that the major segments were working well, EDS tested each segment's redundancy. EDS used Chariot to test critical network segment reliability and throughput at all stages of building the network.

EDS used Chariot to create a traffic flow, then purposely disconnected each of the routers to see what would happen. The screenshot depicts a Chariot graph showing the throughput change when a router was disconnected and the subsequent quick recovery of throughput as the traffic was automatically re-routed. Additionally, Chariot helped identify routing patterns that were set up incorrectly and that needed adjusting. This gave all participants confidence that the numbers that Chariot produced accurately predicted the way traffic would flow over the network when applications were introduced.

Chariot not only helped EDS meet its deadline, but the network--now live with approximately 500 users--is so robust that it has never failed to meet the standards specified in the network service-level agreement (SLA) since going on line more than a year ago. So far, the installed network has met everyone's expectations.

It continues to perform flawlessly, even as new users are added, helping CalISO members work more smoothly with each other. CalISO still uses Chariot to troubleshoot the network on those rare occasions when some part of the network shows signs of crankiness. As a result of the confidence that CalISO has gained in its system, the role of the network has been expanded significantly. For example, CalISO is now planning to carry telemetry data to the power plants over the network--a function not originally envisioned. CalISO's system is guaranteeing California power consumers get reliable, clean power at the lowest possible cost.

Circle 256 for more information from Ganymede Software, Inc.

Charest is senior technical architect of EDS E. solutions, Plane, Texas.