Concept for the coexistence of standard and Real-time Ethernet

In the course of the last years, Real-time Ethernet (RTE) approaches have been gaining market shares. At the same time, interlinking RTEs with office-level networks has become of increasing importance for the automation branch. However, there are a lot of RTE solutions, which are not compatible to each other and to standard Ethernet. In particular, they cannot be linked to nodes with non-real-time operating systems like Windows without the use of a special switch. This study presents a technical approach for extending the Ethernet Standard with real-time capabilities, which facilitates the integration of RTEs in standard Ethernet networks for future developments. Moreover, it offers the advantage of an optimal bandwidth utilization of both, real-time and asynchronous communication. The presented approach also accounts for compatibility between the traditional and the extended Ethernet Standard. Finally, the study provides results from an experimental validation.