Dynamic reconfiguration in HaRTES switched ethernet networks

Abstract

The ability of reconfiguring a system during runtime is essential for dynamic real-time applications in which resource usage is traded online for quality of service. The HaRTES switch, which is a modified Ethernet switch, holds this ability for the network resource, and at the same time it provides hard real-time support for both periodic and sporadic traffic. Although the HaRTES switch technologically caters this ability, a protocol to actually perform the dynamic reconfiguration is missing in multi-hop HaRTES networks. In this paper we introduce such a protocol that is compatible with the traffic scheduling method used in the architecture. We prove the correctness of the protocol using a model checking technique. Moreover, we conduct a set of simulation experiments to show the performance of the protocol and we also show that the reconfiguration process is terminated within a bounded time.