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Networking The Internet

Ethernet Consortia Wants To Unlock a More Time-Sensitive Network (networkworld.com) 110

Posted by EditorDavid from the ethernet-adapting dept.
Does Ethernet need new features like "stream reservation" and time synchronization to make sure time-sensitive data isn't delayed on the network? coondoggie quotes Network World: The demand from Internet of Things, automotive networking and video applications are driving changes to Ethernet technology that will make it more time-sensitive. Key to those changes are a number of developing standards but also a push this week from the University of New Hampshire InterOperability Laboratory to set up three new industry specific Ethernet Time-Sensitive Networking consortiums -- Automotive Networking, Industrial Networking, and ProAV Networking aimed at developing deterministic performance within standard Ethernet for real-time, mission critical applications. "Standards-based precise time, guaranteed bandwidth, and guaranteed worst-case latency in a converged Ethernet network is a game-changer to many industries," said Bob Noseworthy, Chief Engineer, UNH-IOL.
The article also acknowledges the work of the Avnu Alliance, which is also trying to build an ecosystem of "low-latency, time-synchronized, highly reliable synchronized networked devices using open standards through certification."
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Ethernet Consortia Wants To Unlock a More Time-Sensitive Network More

Ethernet Consortia Wants To Unlock a More Time-Sensitive Network

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  • I mean ISO 17458-1 to 5.

    FlexRay supports high data rates, up to 10 Mbit/s, explicitly supports both star and "party line" bus topologies, and can have two independent data channels for fault-tolerance (communication can continue with reduced bandwidth if one channel is inoperative). The bus operates on a time cycle, divided into two parts: the static segment and the dynamic segment. The static segment is preallocated into slices for individual communication types, providing a stronger real-time guarantee than its predecessor CAN. The dynamic segment operates more like CAN, with nodes taking control of the bus as available, allowing event-triggered behavior.

    • Technical presentation on FlexRay: https://www.ece.cmu.edu/~ece64... [cmu.edu]

      • "Does Ethernet need new features like stream reservation" ? This only happens when certain companies are looking for an excuse to band width throttle their part of the internet. A personal reflection is that if these grinning show offs don't like it; they can always walk away.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      TTEthernet or AFDX.

      TTEthernet is related to TTP which is the ancestor of Time Triggered networks with distributed clocks, and FlexRay (which is now a dead end) heavily borrowed from TTP ideas.

      AFDX is deterministic Ethernet network for avionics with guaranteed latency and bandwidth properties.

  • Dear Internet of Things (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Dutch Gun ( 899105 ) on Saturday November 12, 2016 @06:48PM (#53273447)

    Dear Internet of Things,

    First, fix your damned security problems. Then we'll talk about your "demands".

    Sincerely,
    The rest of the internet

    • Re:Dear Internet of Things (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Scarletdown ( 886459 ) on Saturday November 12, 2016 @07:11PM (#53273537) Journal

      Dear Internet of Things,

      Please just go the hell away. We really don't need you, considering our lights, air conditioning and heating systems, toasters, showers, and other common appliances have worked just fine for as long as such things existed without being connected to a global network for the sake of connecting them to a global network.

      • Dear Scarletdown,

        If you think we're interested in your toaster, lights or other common appliance then you don't get it.

        Sincerely,
        The group which as been known for many years as sensor networks, now renamed internet of things just so people can post remarks about how they don't need it despite not known what benefits they actually get from us existing.

        • Dear Group of Sensors,

          The only benefits so far you've proven yourselves useful for, is causing widespread internet outages, trivial access into supposedly secure networks, businesses, and homes for criminals, and padding the bank accounts of shady third party advertising companies who harvest user data.

          Sincerely,

          The Entire World

          • The only benefits so far you've proven yourselves useful for, is causing widespread internet outages

            And there we see someone who hasn't a clue what the technology is used for or how it benefits them every day. Maybe do a bit of googling and you'll find few if any of the 100s of millions of sensors that make up the Internet of Things You Can't Comprehend and Refuse to Believe Exists (IoTYCCaRtBE, just rolls off the tongue) have been involved in any botnet.

            Now repeat after me: "IoT is not toasters and cheap insecure consumer garbage" "IoT has been around for 15 years and has worked just fine" "I will learn

        • You can't fool me. I just know my toaster is spying on me for you. The coffee maker told me. :p

          • Oh no it too? I put a bullet in the toaster a few weeks ago, but I just can't bring myself to do it to the coffee maker! *sobbing*

            • This reminds me of an old joke...

              My girlfriend asked me once, "Why do you carry your gun around the house? What are you so worried about?"
              I just said, "The fucking Decepticons."
              She laughed, I laughed, the toaster laughed, I shot the toaster.
              She never again questioned my ways.

    • Time-Sensitive Networking (TSN) is great for making security easier in some cases.

      In cars, there are multiple systems all working at once, each with their own security flaws. Brakes are one system, stereo system is another. TSN can allow all these systems to be put together in a way where we know the brakes will keep working correctly when the stereo is turned on. So now instead of securing multiple systems, there is only one system.

      Another way TSN is great: for audio. Instead of creating a separate audio n

  • No it does not (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Because of the multitude of fuckers that'll simply abuse it by releasing 'get your internet faster' programs which'll blanket-prioritise every fucking thing.

  • Pwnage Guarantees (Score:5, Funny)

    by Sarusa ( 104047 ) on Saturday November 12, 2016 @06:54PM (#53273465)

    It's about time - I keep running into issues with my IoT botnets, car overrides, and industrial process control malware where I just can't guarantee that I can get into these hideously insecure systems on a fixed time budget.

    This is a serious concern, because when I can only deliver 500,000 insecure baby monitors to my Russian masters instead of the 800,000 they demanded, that's a polonium-210 desert!

    (Seriously, this is actually a real issue that needs to be fixed- you want real-time ethernet for some things like you want a real-time kernel, but I can't help picturing this as working on how reliably you can get across a flaming bridge).

  • Ethernet won against more "deterministic" designs (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Networks aren't deterministic, so any protocol has to handle lost and delayed frames anyway. There is very little benefit to the complexity of low level traffic management, compared to using a simpler design and just adding more bandwidth. The internet is a "dumb network, smart edge" design, and it left "smarter" network designs in the dust for a reason.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      Networks aren't deterministic, so any protocol has to handle lost and delayed frames anyway. There is very little benefit to the complexity of low level traffic management, compared to using a simpler design and just adding more bandwidth. The internet is a "dumb network, smart edge" design, and it left "smarter" network designs in the dust for a reason.

      The problem is you can't just add more bandwidth.Cheap networking is 1Gbit now, but if your streaming needs are starting to chew up a significant proportion

      • The problem is you can't just add more bandwidth.

        Mod up! You could have stopped right there.

        Sweet Jeebuz, so many people think that bandwidth is somehow infinite.

        And every techno-zealot seems to want to dump everything else for their pet projects. I mean who wouldn't want an app for their smartphone that controls their window blinds? https://www.hunterdouglas.com/... [hunterdouglas.com] I like how the woman is standing right in front of the window.

        Its kinda scary that someone somewhere thinks that is the priority use of teh intertoobz.

        • Blame that nonsense on the old science and technology propaganda from the 1950's/60's/70's and even into the 80's. They promised everything from flying cars to controlling absolutely everything in your home at the touch of a button. These ideas have ingrained themselves into the proceeding generations, and the result is utterly useless shit like Phillips Hue, Nest, and this nonsense.

          • Blame that nonsense on the old science and technology propaganda from the 1950's/60's/70's and even into the 80's. They promised everything from flying cars to controlling absolutely everything in your home at the touch of a button. These ideas have ingrained themselves into the proceeding generations, and the result is utterly useless shit like Phillips Hue, Nest, and this nonsense.

            I rather think it is/was just the search for the "next big thing". Smartwatches didn't work. The Internet of Things is an unfolding disaster.

            We are in between the big things, and I'm curious what it will be.

    • Modern Ethernet is really Ethernet in name only.

      The multipoint coaxial segments are gone, replaced by point to point twisted pair. CSMA/CD is pretty much gone*. replaced by switching. The simple wire-level "manchester encoding" is pretty much gone repalced by a highly complex multilevel encodings with echo cancellation

      All that is really left is the frame formats and the addressing scheme.

      Just because a design descision made sense at a particular time and in a particular context does not mean it will make se

  • wrong layer (Score:5, Insightful)

    by KiloByte ( 825081 ) on Saturday November 12, 2016 @07:03PM (#53273505)

    It's the wrong layer to do "stream reservations" or any such kind of prioritising. Ethernet is supposed to deliver bits and frames as-is, managing buffers or the order of packets belongs to a higher layer. Such a layering violation results in no end of bloat and complexity. Complexity = errors.

    • Re:wrong layer (Score:5, Insightful)

      by msauve ( 701917 ) on Saturday November 12, 2016 @07:50PM (#53273685)
      How, exactly, do you propose "any such kind of prioritising" be done by higher layers without support by the lower ones? Be specific.

      "Ethernet is supposed to deliver bits and frames as-is, managing buffers or the order of packets belongs to a higher layer."

      Ethernet has had 802.1p prioritization for many years.

  • "Consortia" is plural. So Consortia agrees with "want", not "wants".

    Even worse, the original submission was correct, so you went out of your way to make it incorrect. That takes dedication to bad English.

  • Utter nonsense (Score:4, Insightful)

    by gweihir ( 88907 ) on Saturday November 12, 2016 @07:26PM (#53273583)

    Ethernet works well if you have over-provisioning. It is simple, almost zero-configuration, robust and reliable. This really bad idea would destroy all these characteristics. Why some (really bad) engineers cannot stay the hell away from things that work well is beyond me.

  • Reinventing token ring - badly. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    If you want token ring, you know where to find it. Ethernet is not that. If you want that, you're far better off just reinvigorating a token ring standard and having at it.

  • All sorts of stuff from the physical-circuit world keep getting proposed for the virtual-circuit world. Like buggywhips for cars.

    I think there's a Van Jacobsen article about that (;-))

  • Why re-invent the wheel? Dump ethernet and convert everything over to token ring.

    btw. Give me a ring when you finally dump token ring and convert everything over to ethernet.

  • It's called isochronous (Score:3)

    by Snotnose ( 212196 ) on Saturday November 12, 2016 @08:41PM (#53273861)
    Essentially it means your socket is guaranteed at least 1 packet every n time units. Back in '01 I worked for a startup that had a wireless chip with isochronous features. I wrote the device driver and trust me, when you have more than 1 isochronous stream it can get pretty hairy to ensure both stream's needs are met.

    The hardware worked, but pulled too much power. They ran out of money before they could so another chip spin. Kinda sad, it was pretty impressive for the time.
  • Let me get this straight. the ultimate destruction of the net is to be accellerated by giving the Internet of Things top priority? I realize that the world has gone batshit insane, but this is like giving Pedophiles guaranteed and first access to your children. Sorry honey, but Jerry Sandusky need to see little Timmy for personal hygeine lessons before we can give him breakfast.
  • The IETF has done this before. ST-II, documented in RFC1190. Technically it is IPv5. I documented an even better protocol, at the link layer, in RFC2549.

  • I recall a quote that is perhaps falsely attributed to Henry Ford and it's something like, "If I had asked people what they wanted they would have said a faster horse." Ethernet does what it does because of it was made within the confines of the needs of a particular base of users. This is a different need and instead of creating a "faster horse" that might break the standard, cause incompatibilities, and other problems I believe they should simply start over with something new, a spec that wouldn't try t

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by guruevi ( 827432 )

      The problem is people want these "HDMI" and "PCIe" over Ethernet. Ethernet is cheap, ubiquitous and as a result error prone with built-in recovery. However now we have protocols like FCoE that craps the bed (as in data corruption) the moment a frame goes missing, is out of order or delayed. So you buy (proprietary) switches that guarantee proper delivery of your Ethernet frames under any condition but that only works, at best, at the datacenter level.

      Now how do you do FCoE over a WAN like the Internet? You

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by skids ( 119237 )

        Now how do you do FCoE over a WAN like the Internet?

        Obviously the "answer" must be "SDN"... despite SDN solutions not even having a way to adequately abstract switch realtime resources and capabilities.

        ATM might have been a viable answer to that, back in the 90s. There just weren't enough monetizable applications that needed this level of RT support... most of the uses it was put to were happy enough to run on IP qos mechanisms once IP packet transmission times fell with increased bandwidth.

        IoT will have to come up with some much more convincing business pl

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Agripa ( 139780 )

      The other standards you mention lack galvanic isolation which is important once you travel 10s of meters, between power systems, or in non-benign environments. Distance is also a problem. The various high speed standards might be acceptable within a rack or between adjacent racks but longer distances are needed.

      I am sure what they would prefer is a brand new protocol build on the ethernet physical interface but that would give up the economy of scale of existing ethernet ASICs.

  • There already are packet switching tech with ability to "handle both traditional high-throughput data traffic, and real-time, low-latency content such as voice and video." call ATM [wikipedia.org].
    To fix Ethernet's high jitter delivery, the frame size need to be small and fixed. Doing so it will not longer be Ethernet.
    If we keep the 64-1500byte Ethernet frame, frame delay will be variable and long, real time traffic cannot be guaranteed.
    Why reinvent a square wheel if all problems has been tackled by ATM?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by skids ( 119237 )

      Because ethernet is cheap as it's a simple design and therefore it will be cheaper to make it work over ethernet which will then be a complicated design and... oh wait.

      Umm... ok maybe just because everything must be made to work over ethernet and/or IP because everyone already uses ethernet and/or IP and billions of endpoints can't be wrong... right?

      (Really, considering the proposed use is on inherently unreliable unlicensed radio spectrum, offering guarantees up to the application layer so they can write c

  • Dear EditorDavid:

    If you're going to claim to be an actual editor, it would behoove you to learn the basics of English grammar. The rule is: one actor wants, multiple actors want.

    In this case, the word "consortia" is plural in form, so they "want." It's subtle, I know ... but, if you'd prefer that people who care about language and communications (you know - writers, professional editors, and educated readers) not laugh and point when your byline appears as the editor of stories posted t

  • If you need all that, use ATM. Ethernet is meant to be a low cost technology for the vast majority who don't need those features.

  • This doesn't sound very Net Neutrality-ish.

    Burn it with fire!

  • I'm seriously having ATM flashbacks from the 90s.

    You younger folks might not remember this, but the segway hype was a weak echo compared to the ATM hype. ATM was going to transform the way we built our networks. Nothing was ever going to be the same after ATM. ATM was going to make all previous data and voice networking obsolete. People would kill to get ATM to the desktop.

    If I'm reading this article right, someone went through the ATM specs and came up with a brand new set of names for the same old cra

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