Media Redundancy Protocol

About: Media Redundancy Protocol is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 216 publications have been published within this topic receiving 3268 citations.

Ethernet Address Resolution Protocol: Or converting network protocol addresses to 48.bit Ethernet address for transmission on Ethernet hardware

Abstract: The implementation of protocol P on a sending host S decides,through protocol P's routing mechanism, that it wants to transmitto a target host T located some place on a connected piece of10Mbit Ethernet cable. To actually transmit the Ethernet packeta 48.bit Ethernet address must be generated. The addresses ofhosts within protocol P are not always compatible with thecorresponding Ethernet address (being different lengths orvalues). Presented here is a protocol that allows dynamicdistribution of the information needed to build tables totranslate an address A in protocol P's address space into a48.bit Ethernet address.

Viking: a multi-spanning-tree Ethernet architecture for metropolitan area and cluster networks

Abstract: Simplicity, cost effectiveness, scalability, and the economies of scale make Ethernet a popular choice for local area networks, as well as for storage area networks and increasingly metropolitan-area networks. These applications of Ethernet elevate it from a LAN technology to a ubiquitous networking technology, thus prompting a rethinking of some of its architectural features. One weakness of existing Ethernet architecture is its use of single spanning tree, which, while useful at avoiding routing loops, leads to low link utilization and long failure recovery time. To apply Ethernet to cluster networks and MANs, these problems need to be addressed. We propose a multi-spanning-tree Ethernet architecture, called Viking, that improves both aggregate throughput and fault tolerance by exploiting standard virtual LAN technology in a novel way. By supporting multiple spanning trees through VLAN, Viking makes the most of the inherent redundancies in most mesh-like networks and delivers a multi-fold throughput gain over single-spanning-tree Ethernet with the same physical network topology. It also provides much faster failure recovery, reducing the down-time to a sub-second range from that of multiple seconds in single-spanning-tree Ethernet architecture. Finally, based only on standard mechanisms, Viking is readily implementable on commodity Ethernet switches without any firmware modifications.

Timeliness of real-time IP communication in switched industrial Ethernet networks

Abstract: Through several giant evolutionary steps, Ethernet has become an almost ubiquitous technology for communication. Being versatile enough to be employed in new and various fields of application, it is now making inroads in factories. However, automated systems are different from many other applications of Ethernet,first and foremost because they require the network technology to deliver real-time performance. In the present study, a number of critical aspects of Ethernet, usually referred to as an Industrial Ethernet, are examined. More specifically, there is a focus on the application-to-application delay and jitter characteristics of such networks, when using Internet protocols such as UDP and TCP. It is demonstrated how important it is to take control of the latency in the station nodes, since the main communication delays occur inside the nodes, and different solutions are presented for controlling these delays. In particular, a priority-based protocol stack is assessed. The results show that real-time, Ethernet-based IP communication is now adequate even for demanding automated applications. In this paper, substation automation (power distribution) is used as an example of a demanding automation system.

Design, implementation, and evaluation of a software-based real-time Ethernet protocol

Abstract: Distributed multimedia applications require performance guarantees from the underlying network subsystem. Ethernet has been the dominant local area network architecture in the last decade, and we believe that it will remain popular because of its cost-effectiveness and the availability of higher-bandwidth Ethernets. We present the design, implementation and evaluation of a software-based timed-token protocol called RETHER that provides real-time performance guarantees to multimedia applications without requiring any modifications to existing Ethernet hardware. RETHER features a hybrid mode of operation to reduce the performance impact on non-real-time network traffic, a race-condition-free distributed admission control mechanism, and an efficient token-passing scheme that protects the network against token loss due to node failures or otherwise. To our knowledge, this is the first software implementation of a real-time protocol over existing Ethernet hardware. Performance measurements from experiments on a 10 Mbps Ethernet indicate that up to 60% of the raw bandwidth can be reserved without deteriorating the performance of non-real-time traffic. Additional simulations for high bandwidth networks and faster workstation hardware indicate that the protocol allows reservation of a greater percentage of the available bandwidth.

Step time change compensation in an industrial automation network

Abstract: One or more embodiments provide Common Industrial Protocol (CIP) based time synchronization systems and methods. The CIP Sync solution can be part of Ethernet/IP and can be based on standard UDP (User Datagram Protocol) and/or IEEE 1588 (Time Synchronization) Ethernet technology. According to an embodiment is a system that compensates for step changes in a master clock.