DNP3 Solutions Help You Increase Data Integrity

DNP3 Solutions Help You Increase Data Integrity

Collecting data from your field equipment is a must for several reasons, including being able to predict maintenance, meeting regulatory requirements, and receiving outage or other time-sensitive alerts.

For each of these, accurate information is essential – and DNP3 is the industrial protocol that can help increase data integrity in your application.

Your DNP3 Primer

DNP3 is primarily used by utilities for telemetry communications. For these applications especially, accurate data is essential for regulatory reporting. This information can be time-stamped at the source when using DNP3.

ProSoft Strategic Product Manager Vishal Prakash notes that a couple other differentiators for DNP3 make it especially helpful for utilities.

“DNP3 is scalable, which makes it a flexible option for utilities or other applications where new equipment is often added,” he said. “The secure authentication the protocol offers ensures data is protected. And it’s an open standard protocol, which means it can communicate with a number of vendors’ equipment – this is especially important for utilities that may have a mix of automation systems on site.”

With DNP3, you can also control how events are classified. That way, important data can be sent more frequently than, say, static information that needs to be collected and stored on a more regular cadence.

Prakash goes into detail on all of these DNP3 features in this tutorial:

DNP3 Gateways for Your Application

ProSoft recently released a new master DNP3 gateway, which joined a secondary module announced late last year.

The new master gateway enables integrated communications between DNP3 devices and EtherNet/IP™ or Modbus® TCP/IP equipment. It features on-board storage for over 1.3 million DNP3 events, ideal for large utility applications. The module’s Data Concentrator mode helps collate and store all data from remote sites, ensuring data is complete.

Contact us to learn more about DNP3 solutions for your application.