A new 2007 North American market research study for hardened substation communications equipment showed that RuggedCom’s RuggedSwitch™ Ethernet Switches and the RuggedRouter™ IP-based routers were ranked “Best in Class” as compared to other products deployed in electric utility substation applications. This study, conducted by Newton-Evans Research Company, the leading market research firm for the electric utility industry, considered both commercial grade and “hardened” devices. The utilities that participated in the survey serve a total of 37.7 million North American customers (of about 149 million total for Canada and USA) and operate a combined total of nearly 11,000 electric power T&D substations, out of a total population of about 67,000 North American utility operated substations. This sample represents about 25% of served North American customers and about 18% of North American utility operated substations.

“Since our inception, RuggedCom has been a technology leader in the field of Substation hardened communications devices”, explains Pino Porciello, Director of Marketing for RuggedCom. “We have developed many industry ‘firsts’ and our products have many industry leading specifications. This market research study illustrates how well accepted and regarded our products have become among the end user community.”

The study also identified key drivers used in the selection of substation communications equipment and asked participants to rank
specific product attributes that were important to them. The top three drivers identified were cost, specifications and reliability, each of which were about equal in importance. With respect to specific product attributes, the two clear leaders were immunity to EMI and security. These results are not surprising given the harsh environment these devices are expected to operate within, and the mission critical nature of applications being deployed within the substation. These are the main reasons that RuggedCom products compared favorably to commercial grade products and other “hardened” devices. EMI, reliability, specifications, and security are the hallmarks
of all RuggedCom products.

All RuggedCom products are RuggedRated™ to provide a high level of immunity to electromagnetic interference and heavy electrical surges typical of environments found in electric utility substations. RuggedRated™ products meet or exceed a wide range of electric utility industry standards including IEC61850 and IEEE1613 Class 2; feature a wide operating temperature range of -40°C to +85°C (no fans); can be powered from a variety of sources (12VDC, 24VDC, 48VDC, 88-300VDC/35-264VAC) with optional dual power supply redundancy; and have high MTBFs and reliability characteristics.

RuggedCom products are also designed with the utmost consideration for security, and our multi-layer approach includes both device level and system level security. The RuggedSwitch™ Ethernet switch products include features such as port security, encryption, and VLANs. The RuggedRouter™ provides integrated VPN/Firewall/Router capabilities to establish an Electronic Security Perimeter around the utility’s critical assets. In addition, the recently announced RuggedCom Gauntlet solution provides a complete NERC CIP Cyber Security solution that ensures secure remote access to a substation with access logging, audit trails, and extensive NERC CIP reporting tools.

RuggedCom is committed to being the leading developer and supplier of communications networking devices and solutions for the electric utility industry.

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