Trilliant Inc. has announced the SecureMesh Bridge products, which integrate a Wide Area Network (WAN) for distribution and a Neighborhood Area Network (NAN) for metering. This is the smart grid industry's first fully integrated private WAN/NAN solution and is a result of Trilliant's acquisition of broadband wireless equipment provider SkyPilot Networks in Q2 2009, according to Trilliant. 

The two new products – the SecureMesh Extender Bridge and the SecureMesh Connector Bridge – both include the long-range, high-capacity backhaul of a wireless WAN mesh network with an integrated advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) collector that aggregates metering communications across a NAN mesh network. The integrated solution provides a dedicated private network without leased cellular costs and extends connectivity to distribution, metering, and consumer applications. In addition, integrated WAN/NAN communications provides support for multi-application partitioning for application security and Quality-of-Service (QoS) guarantees.

Application Domain Partitioning
Supporting multiple applications on a converged infrastructure, however, presents distinct security and performance challenges. Certain grid applications like substation video monitoring have quality-of-service (QoS) requirements that need traffic guarantees and all applications require end-to-end security.

Trilliant’s application domain partitioning solves security and QoS challenges by segmenting an integrated multi-tier communications network into multiple virtual network domains to ensure end-to-end security and guarantee traffic for each Smart Grid application.

Application domain partitioning allows utilities to have a single investment in a private network that also gives control of their operations in a way that still provides security on all levels - from distribution to metering to consumer. By applying established networking concepts such as virtual private networking to provide security and segmentation across a common infrastructure, this solution addresses a significant utility industry concern.