What happens if an IED (with a specific MAC Address) is replaced by another IED (with a different MAC Address)? Has any other IED to be reconfigured with this new MAC Address? (2005-03)

Answer: Nothing needs to be done!

Reason:

The MAC addresses for TCP are resolved by the ARP protocol, so no one needs to know any other system's MAC address, they just need the IP address. The replacement should have the same IP address, but can have a different MAC. The same for OSI (ES-IS protocol). For Goose, all listeners SHOULD only look for the destination (group) address. We have been careful to never use the source MAC address in any of our code, only the destination. There is nothing, however, explicit in the spec about this. Some of the GOOSE schemes [of devices on the market] tied the GOOSE addresses to the source MAC -- this could cause problems! If no one uses source MAC for anything, no IED has to be re-configured.

Literature on ARP protocol:
www.erg.abdn.ac.uk/users/gorry/course/inet-pages/arp.html

Keywords:
IED configuration, re-configuration, ARP, GOOSE