IEC 61850: Work-around for MMS

Very interesting paper just published ... presenting a work-around for MMS ;-)

Integration Method for IEC 61850 into Legacy and Modern PLC Systems

I am a little bit surprised ... when I worked for Siemens (Karlsruhe) I published two papers in the year 1991 (35 years ago!) expecting that MMS could be implemented into a PLC:

Click HERE for the paper “Bridging MAP to Ethernet” [PDF, 720 KB, 1991]

Click HERE for the paper “Fieldbus standardization: Another way to go” [PDF, 720 KB, 1991].

Today we know that MMS could be integrated into PLCs ... 

Gateways work always - definitely.

The expected new work on IEC 61850-8-3 (another mapping than to MMS) would change the situation tremendously:

Communication networks and systems for power utility automation –
Specific Communication Service Mapping (SCSM) –
Mapping to Direct Message Specification (DMS),
JSON Encoding Rules, and WebSockets 

Click HERE for more information on the planned project.

Some Hints on the use of Wireshark for IEC 61850-8-1 (MMS)

Please note the following preferences ... and have fun:

Version I used today:

Set the mms filter so see mms/IEC61850 only:

In case the MMS server is using a different port number: e.g., 12001 instead of standard port 102:

Analyze/Decode/ set other port number accordingly:

Check if presentation users context is correct:

Analyzing MMS/ASN.1/BER is sometimes tricky ... here is an example I figured out the other day ... if the length of a value is three (3) octets then the ASN.1 BER encoded message should indicate a length of 3 ... not 2 ... one single error in the length could damage the communication ...

IEC 61850 (MMS) Messages Traced with Wireshark, Local Host, and Loopback

Have you tried to trace some IEC 61850 (MMS) messages with Wireshark? 

Usually you expect to run Client and Server on different machines to have communication going through an Ethernet Network! Yes! No!

You could easily run the two on one PC and trace the traffic using Wireshark and select the TCP loopback adapter as the interface for Wireshark to look at !!! It is simple.

The address for the server is:

The Client and Server using the IEDScout 5.2 from Omicron:

Trace: