provide complete control over what is accessible to each party. There must be matching entries in the server and client tables to provide access to data and objects. Interoperability The wide acceptance of ICCP by the utility industry has resulted in several ICCP products being on the market. Although interoperability is not regarded as a high risk area, the standard is such that an implementation does not have to support all conformance blocks in order to claim compliance with the standard. A minimal implementation only requires Block 1. Only those blocks necessary to achieve the required functionality need be implemented. It is also not necessary to support all objects defined in the standard for any particular block. Extensive interoperability testing between products of some of the major vendors has been a feature of ICCP protocol development. Independent reports are available, as no doubt are reports from vendors. An ICCP purchaser must define functionality required in terms of conformance blocks required and the objects within those blocks. Application profiles for the ICCP client and server conformances must match if the link is to operate successfully. Product Differentiation ICCP is a real time data exchange protocol providing features for data transfer, monitoring and control. For a complete ICCP link there need to be facilities to manage and configure the link and monitor its performance. The ICCP standard does not specify any interface or requirements for these features that are necessary but nevertheless do not affect interoperability. Similarly failover and redundancy schemes and the way the SCADA responds to ICCP requests is not a protocol issue so is not specified. These non protocol specific features are referred to in the standard as “local implementation issues”. ICCP implementers are free to handle these issues any way they wish. Local implementation is the means that developers have to differentiate their product in the market with added value. Additional money spent on a product with well-developed maintenance and diagnostic tools may well be saved many times over during the life of the product if use of the ICCP connection is expected to grow and change. Product Configurations Commercial ICCP products are generally available for one of three configurations: As a native protocol embedded in the SCADA host. As a networked server. As a gateway processor. As an embedded protocol the ICCP management tools and interfaces are all part of the complete suite of tools for the