RTL-TEP: AN ETHERNET PROTOCOL BASED ON TDMA

RTLinux-GPL and Ethernet networks can be effectively used for many real-time environments by using some mechanisms or protocols to provide support for real-time and QoS requirements. This paper presents RTL-TEP, a software protocol on top of Ethernet in order to make Ethernet deterministic. The main issues to face implementing TDMA in software are described, as well as the special features of RTL-TEP. Some of the questions that are discussed are clock synchronization, dynamic behaviour and fault-tolerant mechanisms.