System integration: Development of a global network communication protocol

In the era of globalization and standardization, in the perspective of industrial system integration, the implementation of a network framework able to interconnect any type of device and supporting both real-time (RT) and time-uncritical communication is becoming a must. This paper proposes an original entirely software-based communication framework to support RT communication over standard Ethernet, and compares it with the most relevant commercially available RT protocols in term of global costs and performances.