An overview of the OMNeT++ simulation environment
Proceedings of the 1st international conference on Simulation tools and techniques for communications, networks and systems & workshops
Modeling and Tools for Network Simulation
Modeling and Tools for Network Simulation
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Availability is an important requirement in networks used to control physical processes such as those present in the U.S. Critical Infrastructure, also known as Process Control Systems (PCS) or Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems. For instance, the IEC 61850 family of standards defines the network protocol for electric substations and the interface the substation presents to the Internet in the Smart Grid. Most of these networks currently use IEEE 802.3 Ethernet as opposed to legacy deployments using direct point-to-point connections that required a total of n * (n - 1)/2 connections, also known as the n2 problem. IEC 61850 (and other industrial protocols) operate in an environment where messages must arrive in time to be processed and action taken by control equipment. Thus, this delicate network becomes a target for attackers that may attempt to delay message delivery to negatively affect availability and cause problems, possibly leading to a blackout or unsafe state of the system. Components and processes must be designed to handle delayed messages. This paper presents a theoretic model that can be used to estimate the round-trip-time of a message over Ethernet under different link loads. A discrete event simulator called OMNeT++ was used to build a simulation and validate the proposed model. Simulation results indicate that the model is accurate.