DNP3 Test set, which one?
I was playing with Triangle Test Harness for DNP and comparing it with the one from ASE. ASE test set requires a higher investment, twice as much as Triangle. So this could be a disadvantage right there. However, if you are an engineering company dealing with legacy protocols such as CDC, Harris, TEJAS, …, ASE is a better choice since they can be added for a very low price. You do not have that option with Triangle.
ASE application seems to have a better graphical user interface. It uses a multiple document interface, MDI, for its application that allows a better management of the information. On the other hand, Triangle user interface is more of a dialog based interface where you need to deal with multiple floating windows.
Both applications have an interface to show the data traffic. ASE’s interface seems to be more useful since it uses different colors to differentiate the layers of the packet. What seems to be odd with Triangle is that the packets are not time-stamped. In a recent experience, I was trying to get a sense of the channel delay and could not use Triangle for the very same reason.
You have the option of defining the requests you send to the outstation in both applications. But again, ASE’s arrangement seems to be much more user friendly.
If you like to test DNP over IP applications, you have both TCP and UDP options in ASE test set. I could not get the UDP option to work with Triangle (I was using a packet sniffer, which was showing that the Triangle application is always sending out TCP traffic). This is a big minus for a test set.
One thing that Triangle can score against ASE is how the host IP address is defined in IP communication. In ASE, the host IP address is defined globally. Therefore, even if you define multiple outstation addresses in your data exchange list, still all of them are sent to the same IP address. You do not have that restriction with Triangle.
Take care for now,
Rod
