Demonstrating the Multi-Hop Capabilities of the HaRTES Real-Time Ethernet Switch

Ethernet is becoming the de facto standard networking technology for a vast area of application domains, including industrial and factory automation systems, computerized machinery and cars. Many of these applications have specific requirements, namely in terms of temporal determinism, that cannot be efficiently fulfilled by Common Off-the-Shelf Ethernet technology. This scenario motivated the development of the so-called Real-Time Ethernet (RTE) protocols, such as TTEthernet, Profinet, and Ethernet POWERLINK, which are modifications and/or extensions of the base Ethernet technology and enable real-time traffic. Despite that these RTE protocols follow different strategies, they offer, in general, good performance levels and strict timeliness guarantees. However, they have been designed to handle static requirements, because they are based on static resource allocation policies.