Unified status monitoring information model and configuration description of communication network is highly desirable to achieving status monitoring of communication network in smart substations.A status monitoring information model of communication network is developed to represent the operation state of different network functionalities by means of function decomposition/information extracting and mapping of the management information base（MIB）.The description method of physical network topology，protection devices and switch devices is also proposed based on the extension of substation configuration description language（SCL）.The process level communication network of a high voltage level substation is described in standard SCL files as an example，which demonstrates the availability of the proposed status monitoring information model and configuration description.