NASPInet - The Internet for Synchrophasors

NASPI is a collaborative effort between the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC), and North American electric utilities, vendors, consultants, federal and private researchers and academics. NASPInet is an effort to develop an "industrial grade", secure, standardized, distributed, and expandable data communications infrastructure to support synchrophasor applications in North America. In some aspects NASPInet mirrors the Internet in its construct but not all. Some of the management and administrative features are similar while others such as the continuous streaming of data from phasor measurement units are not. This paper will broadly discuss the similarities and differences between the two networks.