User's Manual

Understanding Silver Spring Networks Access Points 1 About Access Points
Understanding Silver Spring Networks Access Points 4 March 2013 Silver Spring Networks 14
15Kbpsor15%,leaving85%forothersmartgridsolutionssuchasDAorDR(disaster
recovery).
ItisworthnotingthatthereareanumberoffactorsthatimpacteachRFMeshlinkbetween
anytwonodesincludingbutnotlimitedto:scheduledjobs(suchasmeterreads),path
selectionfromanRFdevicetoanAccessPoi nt,failuresoroutages,etc.Aneffectivemethod
tomonitornetworkperformance(datatransmission,bandwidthutilization,etc.)isatan
AccessPointastheAPisthetakeoutpointforallassociatedRFdevices.MeaningRFdevices
andRelaysintheSilver
SpringNANareconstantlyretuningto,optimizingtheirpathsand
reportingintotheirAccessPoints.
AlltrafficflowinginandoutoftheRFMeshnetworkmusttraversetheAccessPoint.Whileit
isfairlysimpletomonitorasingleAccessPoint,itisimportanttorealizethatthereare
typically
manyAccessPointsinacommerciallydeployedsmartgridsystem.TheSilver
SpringsolutionenablesallAccessPointstooperateindependentlyandinparallel,effectively
increasingthroughputandreducinglatency.
TheSilverSpringUtilityIQNEM,GridScape,andHCMenabletheconfigurationofpolices
forbandwidthutilizationforboththeWANand
theNAN.Onceconfigured,themonitoring
applicationsgeneratealertsforanybandwidthutilizationpolicyviolations.Thenetwork
statisticsreportprovidesdetailedinsightintopotentialnetworkloadissues.
ThemonitoringapplicationscanmeasureandreportonRFcharacteristicsintheNAN,
includingtheidentificationofdevicesassociatedwithareasofpoor
coverage.Havingsuch
dataenablesSilverSpringtoassesswhethersuchareasrequirethedeploymentofadditional
RelaysorAccessPoints.Thisisespeciallyusefulintheearlyphasesofadeployment.
Figure 4. Average bandwidth consumed by AMI traffic