학술논문

TSN-FlexTest: Flexible TSN Measurement Testbed
Document Type
Periodical
Source
IEEE Transactions on Network and Service Management IEEE Trans. Netw. Serv. Manage. Network and Service Management, IEEE Transactions on. 21(2):1387-1402 Apr, 2024
Subject
Communication, Networking and Broadcast Technologies
Computing and Processing
Hardware
Synchronization
Software
Mathematical analysis
Emulation
Standards
Protocols
Ethernet
industrial communication
Quality-of-Service
testbed
Time-Sensitive Networking
Language
ISSN
1932-4537
2373-7379
Abstract
In order to provide consistent low-latency communication network services, Time-Sensitive Networking (TSN) unites a set of standards for time-synchronization, flow control, enhanced reliability, and management. We design the TSN-FlexTest testbed with generic commodity hardware and open-source software components to enable flexible TSN measurements. We have conducted extensive measurements to validate the TSN-FlexTest testbed and to examine TSN characteristics. The measurements provide insights into the effects of TSN configurations, such as increasing the number of synchronization messages for the Precision Time Protocol, indicating that a measurement precision of 30 ns can be achieved. The TSN measurements included extensive evaluations of the Time-Aware Shaper (TAS) for sets of Tactile Internet (TI) packet traffic streams. The measurements elucidate the effects of different scheduling and shaping approaches, while revealing the need for pervasive network control that synchronizes the sending nodes with the network switches. We present the first measurements of distributed TAS with synchronized senders on a commodity hardware testbed, demonstrating the same Quality-of-Service as with dedicated wires for high-priority TI streams despite a 200% over-saturation cross traffic load. The testbed is provided as an open-source project to facilitate future TSN research.