Patent ID: 8392557

Claim:
A method of analyzing a communication performance of an Intelligent Electronic Device (IED) configured to process network messages transferred with a Substation Automation (SA) communication service, comprising, during each of a plurality of SA scenarios: identifying, by an analyzer, a number n 1 of network messages related to the SA communication service and processed by the IED; determining, by the analyzer, a number n 2 of specific communication protocol elements within the number n 1 of identified network messages; determining, by the analyzer, a number n 3 of elements with a changed data value within the number n 2 of specific communication protocol elements; determining, by the analyzer, a processing time t p of the identified network messages at the IED; and calculating, by the analyzer, SA communication service-specific parameters k 1 , k 2 , k 3 of a processing time model including the specific protocol element, based on the numbers n 1 , n 2 , n 3 and the processing time t p for each of the plurality of SA scenarios.