Results , Insights and Best Practices from IIC Testbeds : Time-Sensitive Networking Testbed
To date , most of the testbed participants have used the TSN Testbed to achieve results to advance their synchronization and scheduled traffic capabilities . Most participants are currently working on communicating critical control traffic and successfully getting certain protocols to run over TSN . The TSN Testbed ’ s significant progress is great news for all of the participants . They have used the work in the TSN Testbed to put a high priority on their investments .
All participants are gaining a valuable sense of how their particular implementations work with this new technology ; what challenges they have encountered , where they need to focus development and where they may have misunderstood or require further clarification from the standards and technology elements . All participants – the network infrastructure vendors , the end-device vendors , even the testing tool vendors – have learned what it means to implement TSN , where they can enhance , improve or update their product to interoperate and how it can be done in such a way that the vendors and eventually the customers gain value . These experiences are not just valuable for the participants , but are being fed back to the various standards groups working on TSN .
The most recent TSN Testbed plugfest occurred on January 12 & 13 , 2017 in Austin , Texas at the NI Industrial IoT Lab .
Three plugfests have occurred , to date , offering participants opportunities to test , for example : � Synchronizing devices to a common , precise sense of time delivered over the network � Establishing TSN flows between various vendors � Defining TSN flows in Central Network Controllers ( CNCs ) and distribute schedules to network infrastructure � Communicating input / output traffic via TSN flows � Demonstrating TSN ’ s ability to protect critical flows from high-bandwidth traffic � Connecting via gateway non-TSN traffic into TSN flows � TSN flow requirements � CNC to network infrastructure ( schedule distribution ) � Data consistency over OPC UA Pub-Sub over TSN
7 . INFLUENCING STANDARDS
It is one thing to build a standard and it is another thing to actually implement and use it . The TSN Testbed is accelerating this process by early phase usage of enhancements to the Ethernet standards .
Specifically , the testbed has been influencing two Ethernet standards : IEEE 802.1 and IEEE 802.3 . All TSN Testbed work is filtered to Avnu , a standards organization developing the interoperability and certification based on IEEE ’ s TSN . Through Avnu , it is channeled back into IEEE [ Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers ].
- 24 - January 2017