Your Next Car's Electronics Will Likely Be Connected By Ethernet 180
Lucas123 writes "As the sophistication of automotive electronics advances, from autonomous driving capabilities to three-dimensional cameras, the industry is in need of greater bandwidth to connect devices to a car's head unit. Enter Ethernet. Industry standards groups are working to make 100Mbps and 1Gbps Ethernet de facto standards within the industry. Currently, there are as many as nine proprietary auto networking specifications, including LIN, CAN/CAN-FD, MOST and FlexRay. FlexRay, for example, has a 10Mbps transmission rate. Making Ethernet the standard in the automotive industry could also open avenues for new apps. For example, imagine a driver getting turn-by-turn navigation while a front-seat passenger streams music from the Internet, and each back-seat passenger watches streaming videos on separate displays."
This might get us into trouble when the Cylons show up.
Imagine (Score:4, Insightful)
"For example, imagine a driver getting turn-by-turn navigation while a front-seat passenger streams music from the Internet, and each back-seat passenger watches streaming videos on separate displays."
Imagine!
Except they're already doing it now on their fondleslabs.
Re:Imagine (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, it's a stupid summary, probably from someone who doesn't have a clue on what the current buses do.
Nobody's saying "Man, I wish my CAN bus had more bandwidth so I could stream!
And really, people, if you're going to change the bus, can't you make the new one based on plastic fiber and cheap LEDs, so that we stop having fried computers every time a cable gets bad?
Re:Imagine (Score:5, Interesting)
What's messed up is the article itself, especially in the belief that automakers will want to switch to this. Right now Cadillac and Lincoln cars have been using fibre in their cars for the 'drive-by-wire' system for years. As well as in parts of the HUD, and rear-display systems. Beleive you and me, they want to use this, because it's reallllly expensive it if gets toasted, and they have to replace part of the harness. This isn't really a job your layman can do, compared to say pulling and restringing an entire wiring harness inside the cab. That's something anyone with a bit of patience and weekend or two can do.
though... (Score:2)
Nobody's saying "Man, I wish my CAN bus had more bandwidth so I could stream!
Yup, in *theory* you know that a CAN bus is used for critical automotive functionality (say engine, ABS, power steering, or even drive-by-wire, autonomous steering, etc.)
Whereas the streaming should stay confined within the media subsystem, and both should be kept completely isolated from each other.
So it doesn't make sense to speak about successor of CAN bus technologies and media consumption in the infoteinment system of the car.
They are completely separate networks.
In theory.
In practice, you know pretty
Re:Imagine (Score:4, Funny)
What a fantastic idea! By switching to a well understood standard it will finally make our vehicles trivial to hack!
Ohh.. wait.. maybe that isn't such a good thing? *shrug*
Well I look forward to the day in which I no longer have to call a taxi, I can just take out my laptop and make one drive to my location.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
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I would like to introduce you to my "friends."
Say hello from me. [youtube.com]
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tl;dr? In short the wacky network architecture has indeed been making vehicles harder to hack.
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Every ethernet network is trivial to hack?
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Shared networking with user services? (Score:5, Interesting)
What a horrible, horrible idea. Not the ethernet aspect, that makes sense, reinventing the wheel is usually a bad idea, and especially so when the competition has a multi-decade lead on eliminating bugs and malicious exploits and offers cheap, reliable off-the-shelf hardware. No, it's the idea of putting anything whatsoever user-accessible on the internal network I object to. If this data bus is carrying the information that tells my increasingly fly-by-wire care to apply the brakes or turn right to avoid oncomming semis then all it takes is one misbehaving flappy-bird clone spamming the network at the wrong moment to kill me, to say nothing of malicious attacks. There's absolutely no reason *anything* but internal systems communication should be on that network. Period. If you want an media network fine, but that can probably be provided far more cheaply and conveniently by including an airgapped $10 wireless hub with a 10' range that can only talk directly to things like the steering-wheel mounted media controls and the dashboard LCD/windshield HUD. And maybe a cellular modem. You're in a pretty decent approximation of a Faraday cage, so non-malicious outside interference should be minimal, and any communication with the mission-critical network should be heavily firewalled, at an absolute minimum. Not much reason to allow bi-directional communication at all - "spam" the wireless network with multicast up-to-the-second system and diagnostc data and you're good, at 0.01% of total bandwidth. No reason for anything not physically connected to be able to say a %$#@!* thing to the mission-critical components. If ever there was a non-hyperbolic use of the term "mission critical", maintaining control of a car is it.
* %$#@! - when no variation of "fuck" is strong enough. Bonus points if you can pronounce it. Q-Bert did, but then he had that hose-nose to work with.
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There are multiple busses in vehicles already, separated by function. Engine controls are usually on a higher speed can bus, stuff like the speedo and body (lights, doors, etc) on a low speed can bus. I can see adding a third bus for entertainment type stuff such as the radio sat nav, wireless hotspot etc.
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And then one token ring to rule them all, and in the blind spot bind them!
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Do not want. All this complexity of modern cars makes me appreciate my classic car (no computers at all) more and more.
What?? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What?? (Score:5, Insightful)
Mixing entertainment systems and critical safety systems on the same bus is common already. The only change is that with ethernet you get decent bandwidth and well-understood QoS.
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Mixing entertainment systems and critical safety systems on the same bus is common already. The only change is that with ethernet you get decent bandwidth and well-understood QoS.
QoS is OSI level 7. Ethernet is OSI level 1. There is no reason to assume that TCP/IP or QoS will be standardized upon or even used at all here.
Also, QoS is a total dog if you are trying to employ it on consumer grade equipment. At least, that's been my experience with numerous linksys, d-link, and netgear devices. I'm kind of down on QoS as a result. Great idea, ruined by the implementation that most consumers will ever see.
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You may want to review your OSI model. I don't remember QoS, but layer 1 is the physical medium. Ethernet is layer 2.
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Layer 7 is application layer, which is indeed where QoS sits (it deals with the source of the data).
Ethernet, as in 802.3 is indeed layer 2, but wikipedia confirms: its more than just that. It includes the physical layer too.
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You may want to review your OSI model. I don't remember QoS, but layer 1 is the physical medium. Ethernet is layer 2.
And Diffserv operates at layer 3, assuming TCP/IP. QoS definitely does not take place only or even primarily at layer 7.
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It's called 802.1p, a mechanism for QoS tagging in a dot1q tagged frame.
That said, this move could give new meaning to the second C in CSMA/CD.
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Also, QoS is a total dog if you are trying to employ it on consumer grade equipment. At least, that's been my experience with numerous linksys, d-link, and netgear devices. I'm kind of down on QoS as a result.
Automobile manufacturers are considering using AVB [wikipedia.org] as the mechanism [avnu.org] by which they get their quality-of-service guarantees -- basically re-using the audio/video bandwidth-reservation protocols as a way to reserve bandwidth for their command signaling data.
Whether or not this is a good idea I will leave as an exercise to the reader; but at least it is not relying on your father's broken QoS system.
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There is no reason to assume that TCP/IP or QoS will be standardized upon or even used at all here.
There is every reason to assume that. The car manufacturers are working hard not just to standardize on IPv6 in general, but in fact to have a common approach to such things as address allocation. QoS will be much easier to handle with ethernet, not because it is less complex but because the code is already written and widely deployed.
Also, QoS is a total dog if you are trying to employ it on consumer grade equipment.
I must admit that I have never tried to use QoS on ethernet with consumer grade equipment. Why would you want to though? Generally you have precisely one switch at home, and t
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I believe they will segment mission critical systems to a dedicate physical bus with redundant links in any proposed in car network.
I will be surprised if they do that. It would make sense, but since they do not do that today, why should they suddenly start doing so?
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Just because it's done doesn't make it a good idea.
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Really. What could possibly go wrong?
Luckily, ethernet totally has this covered: in the event of a collision, you just back off for a random number of milliseconds and then retransmit. No big deal! And cars are basically just big packets, right?
Re:What?? (Score:5, Insightful)
No thanks. I don't want to deal with my car getting hacked/stolen/monitored/remote controlled, which is infinitely more likely than this overwrought system.. I don't mind it for medical care, but not for my car. Cars should be stupid simple.
Micro USB (Score:2)
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Bah, just use one of the 2.1A USB things instead of the 1A USB things and it'll be fine, right? ;-)
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Cables? What about chargers? Why can't I charge my electric car with my phone's charger? This needs to change!
Can confirm unable to charge PEV with my laptop's USB port. Epic fail on the part of the manufacturer.
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Seriously man. I mean my laptop can stream like GB/s, why can't my car that only draws a few KW charge from it? Like seriously, dude. It should be able to run for, like, thousands of hours. Kilo versus Giga baybe.
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Ethernet seems like the wrong system to be using for anything where the configuration is fairly static and reliability is at a premium. You really want your steering wheel traffic hitting the windshield wipers because their NIC blew up and started claiming every MAC address as their own?
You can fix this stuff on enterprise networks with really expensive switches with L2 authentication / sticky MACs, STP, etc-- but that seems like the definition of "overengineered".
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Ethernet seems like the wrong system to be using for anything where the configuration is fairly static and reliability is at a premium. You really want your steering wheel traffic hitting the windshield wipers because their NIC blew up and started claiming every MAC address as their own?
What makes you think this can't happen with CAN bus?
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It wont' happen if you use a couple of switches and some relays for the wipers instead, and mechanics for the wheel/accel/brake etc....a lot cheaper too.
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It wont' happen if you use a couple of switches and some relays for the wipers instead, and mechanics for the wheel/accel/brake etc....a lot cheaper too.
But then you can't have a smart car with a moisture sensor and rain detector to automagically turn the wipers on for you. Although, I have gotten spoiled by not having to remember to turn on/off the headlights. Same deal for interior lights, - you could go with the old school mechanical switches but it is nice to have them turn on at the appropriate times and turn them selves off if your toddler left the light on and you didn't notice.
Brakes and steering are still mechanical, btw.
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Ethernet = several decades of bug-fixes against everything malicious SOBs can throw at it, included in all but the cheapest off-the-shelf networking hardware. CAN, etc = ???.
Reinventing the wheel is usually a bad idea unless you're shooting for something fundamentally different than anything that has been attempted before.
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CAN is just as old as ethernet, if that is your test of reliability.
And it'll be... (Score:2)
IPV4. bets?
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nah, IPX
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nah, IPX
(slaps forehead) Of course!
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Even though we're all supposed to believe IPX was inferior to IP, I still think the addressing scheme has some advantages over IPv4.
It's a larger address space, with 32 bits of network addressing and 48 bits of node addressing using the MAC address by default, and there was no need for DHCP as clients could easily autoconfig node addresses by listening to the wire.
Assuming IP had adopted this addressing scheme, I sometimes wonder how many man-hours and dollars would have been saved over the years from the e
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Irrelevant on a private network.
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Imagine the possibilities: You could open your trunk from anywhere in the world, you could preheat the car before your flight even lands, you could update your license plate in real time!
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Every component of my car outward facing.... that's absolutely terrifying.
People seem to be misunderstanding (Score:5, Informative)
In fact, the included diagram seems to indicate broadcom is pitching some kind of adapter device which would enable inclusion of the new L1 layer with no changes whatsoever to the programming of the devices on either end. One would hope that such a thing would be only considered a stop-gap measure while they reworked their components to use the new bus natively in future models. History clearly shows that such adapters tend to be inefficient.
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This article is about the L1 PHY layer, not the L2 Data Link layer. There is no reason to assume this means your car will be using TCP/IP. The diagram in TFA clearly indicates that the PHY layer being discussed here is independent of the protocol.
There's every reason to suspect that TCP/IP will be used for audio/video modules. There's no particular benefit to using anything else; no matter what, crypto is going to have to be a part of it.
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Except that using protocols that are designed for audio and video instead of general IP traffic ensures that you see/hear a glitch free stream without waiting for buffering before you start playback every time.
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Funny, with digital TV, any kind of it including over-the-air, you have to wait a few seconds for buffering. (or waiting for the next full frame and whatever, I don't know in great detail and accuracy)
It was quite noticeable when it coexisted with analog TV and channel switching was instantaneous on that one.
Also the parent (or grand-parent) forgot about UDP/IP, to niptick a bit.
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The article mentions Parrot's Ethernet AVB [wikipedia.org] connected systems. The carriage of audio/video media over AVB has been standardized by the AVB Transport Protocol in IEEE 1722 [ieee.org], and yes, it is just Ethernet, no IP.
The theory is that your car is a LAN, and does not need to have Layer 3.
ethernet =/= internet (Score:2)
imagine a driver getting turn-by-turn navigation while a front-seat passenger streams music from the Internet, and each back-seat passenger watches streaming videos on separate displays.
Just because there's an internal network for the car's electronics doesn't mean there's any internet connection (and there'd better not be).
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imagine a driver getting turn-by-turn navigation while a front-seat passenger streams music from the Internet, and each back-seat passenger watches streaming videos on separate displays.
Just because there's an internal network for the car's electronics doesn't mean there's any internet connection (and there'd better not be).
Just the possibility of playing NetWars on my car's intranet has me all in a tizzy.
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But there will be. Because some marketing genius will convince the higher-ups that it will save $50 per car on the implementation of On-Star.
I am still waiting for the great-On-Star-Hack-megaJam. We should make it easier for someone to shutdown half the US cars in one mouse-click...
and be locked into the poor build in radio system (Score:4, Insightful)
and be locked into the poor build in radio system that can't be upgraded to a better 3rd part one.
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AVC-LAN (Score:2)
What about AVC-LAN (what Toyota uses)?
Not that I would suggest it has the bandwidth of ethernet!
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WTB IPv6 (Score:3)
Need teh NATz for my car!
Back seat passengers ... (Score:2)
Built-in entertainment systems are stuck in the vehicle. And unless you have a service that allows it, they require additional service plans for those devices. A phone/tablet needs (for longer trips) a USB power port. A 12 volt port with suitable adapter does just fine.
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The way I'd do it would be a file server with 1TB+ hard drive, that'd be better than a puny 16GB flash per tablet (assuming that tablet can access file shares on a network, which probably leaves Apple stuff out)
USB power jacks built-in directly to the car with the latest "Power Delivery" specifications would be nice as well, no need for 12V outlets (round? cigar plug?).
Or you know, passengers could sleep, watch the scenery, talk to each other.
Hmm (Score:3)
ADHD (Score:2)
What is wrong with you people? Can't you just read a book or magazine or sleep if you aren't driving? Look out the window? Count the blue cars? An hour in solitary and you all will be curled in a ball moaning for mommy.
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Can't you just read a book or magazine or sleep if you aren't driving?
Sometimes. Sometimes it makes me nauseous. Looking out the window only works for so long.
Hope they harden it. (Score:2)
Ethernet is notoriously susceptible to the emp from a close lighting strike. If you don't think so, just work in the cable industry for a while. After every serious lighting storm we will have several modems that appear fine except the ethernet is blown. It is usually the only thing burned out in the house. Often the rf side is still working fine and sending information back to the management system. It will suck when you have to go into a parts store and say gimme a box of ethernet chips for my car.
Yeah, but ... (Score:3)
Now imagine how much the data plan for your car is going to cost you. You'll be locked into a plan with the car company and pay through the nose.
No thanks. I have a dedicated GPS, an MP3 player I can connect to my car stereo, and most everybody has portable devices which can play video already.
Now get off my damned lawn, because I don't want or need a car which is connected to the interwebs.
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Car companies are carriers now?
I find this stuff unlikely.
More likely, you change the car's nav and entertainment system's SIM card if you want to change cellular provider and if you don't want one, don't have any.
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I have seen little evidence of car companies being willing to do such things in the things they make.
Like every other company, they want lock in, monetization, and a big piece of the action of ongoing revenue.
I find it hard to believe the won't try to force you into buying from them. They're not going to make things they aren't going to profit from, bec
Your next car will be a bike. (Score:2)
News flash; we are coming to the end of the petrochemical age. We are very much at peak oil, and the way down will only see rising fuel costs. Buying a Hybrid may be more economic and efficient, but ultimately our whole way of life will be challenged. Get used to the idea that soon we will not have the pervasive availability of cheap fuel. Get on your bike.
Re:Your next car will be a bikeTesla. (Score:2)
EVs are very much upcoming. The only thing holding Tesla back from making more cars is that they're already consuming something like half the LiIon cells produced on the planet.
I'm OK with ethernet in cars (Score:4, Funny)
As long as I don't have to make my own cables.
One of the longest days of my life was many years ago when I told a friend I could wire up his little storefront business if he bought a spool of Cat5 and a bunch of connectors.
I sat there with that crimping tool and my fumblefingers and invented entire new categories of curse words. A friend from a local Army base came by and for a few slices of pizza and a six-pack he knocked out those cables like nothing.
It was a humbling experience. Which I probably should not have shared here on Slashdot because you guys were probably all making your own ethernet cables since your were like five years old.
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We're not all teenage fans of Justine Beaver here. It's not so long since co-ax was used for ethernet.
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At one spot in the store, I stopped and picked up a device I hadn't seen for years, and thankfully haven't had to touch one for much longer than that. And then realized that many of my younger networking peers wouldn't have a clue what the heck it wa
Aircraft (Score:2)
Good Call (Score:2)
Seriously look over any automotive electronics spec and you can smell the steaming pile of, "I want to be guaranteed easy employment another 10 years" shit from a mile away. I wish engineering projects included more ethics audits that resulting in contractors and employees getting fired, black b
individual bus for ECU and Entertainment (Score:2)
How is this big news? (Score:2)
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For the same reason they invented IPX/SPX, Appletalk and TCP/IP in the first place? Or for the same reason they invented Beta and VHS? Or Blu-Ray and whatever that other one was? There have always been competing standards.
Re: Stop reinventing the wheel. (Score:5, Funny)
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Why did these morons spend time and energy to create ... CAN/CAN-FD
If you think the CAN standards were developed by "morons", there's no educating you.
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Yeah, everyone knows the Cylons are going to show up any day now.
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Whatever you do, do NOT let the token fall out of the network, because you'll never find it in all the crap on the side of our roads.
Re:Huh? (Score:4, Informative)
Connectivity used when shit has to just work all the time, regardless how many hipsters are in the area.
Re:Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
Ethernet may work all the time - but there are no guarantees on packet latency. The basis of ethernet is that all traffic is equal; nobody has priority.
Which, to me, sounds all wrong. I'd much rather the packet from the collision-avoidance system to the brake system saying "holy shit stop NOW" gets higher priority than the next packet of Justin Bieber headed to the back seat.
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Phhtt, the packet to turn off Justin Bieber should have the highest priority, forget the collision avoid avoidance system, the Bieber avoidance system is more important. You do not want to have to explain to God that, yeah, in my dying moment I was listening to Bieber.
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I wouldn't mind that. He'd probably decide I suffered enough on earth already and I can bypass purgatory.
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Who says it has to be the same LAN?
Also: CAN can already be interrupted by infotainment systems, since some vehicles have actually used the head unit (the part of the stereo you control) as the CAN bus hub. Idiotic design.
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This is why, unless the manufacturers are really stupid, they'll use ethercat, which does have guaranteed latency and priorities. But car systems will only use a fraction of the bandwidth.
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Which means that you use separate segments.
B.t.w. Bieber sucks worse than Beta.
No (Score:5, Interesting)
If it's good enough for commercial aircraft [wikipedia.org] it's good enough for your car.
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No, it really isn't. Commercial aircraft aren't traveling a few seconds' distance behind other aircraft.
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Re:No (Score:5, Interesting)
And? The network between the brake pedal and the brake doesn't give a flying fsck about the state of the driver, just make abso-%$#@!-ing-lutely sure that nothing the user (or a malfunctioning/malicious app ) can interfere with the signal. For starters don't put anything user-accessible on the same network - insert a heavily firewalled router at least, and preferably an old-fashioned air-gap.
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The only thing AFDX has in common with ethernet is the mac layer. It's incompatible with and looks nothing like standard tcp/udp you normally see running around on ethernet nowadays.
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Otoh, if they want to implement it all using token ring, maybe we can talk.
Modern ethernet networks are a network of switched full duplex point to point links. CSMA/CD is still supported in the general purpose copper physical layers but only for backwards compatibility reasons.
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First all that have video transmission, as parking assistance, nightvision, review cameras. Infotainment. I don't think the same bus, but in the future using the same technology. One technology, one open standard might bake stuff overall easier to implement, and that lowers costs or increases quality, or features, or a mix of these.