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Authors
Advisor(s)
Abstract(s)
A number of characteristics are boosting the eagerness of
extending Ethernet to also cover factory-floor distributed
real-time applications. Full-duplex links, non-blocking and
priority-based switching, bandwidth availability, just to
mention a few, are characteristics upon which that eagerness
is building up. But, will Ethernet technologies really manage
to replace traditional Fieldbus networks? To this question,
Fieldbus fundamentalists often argue that the two
technologies are not comparable. In fact, Ethernet
technology, by itself, does not include features above the
lower layers of the OSI communication model. Where are the
higher layers that permit building real industrial
applications? And, taking for free that they are available,
what is the impact of those protocols, mechanisms and
application models on the overall performance of Ethernetbased
distributed factory-floor applications? In this paper we
provide some contributions that may pave the way towards
providing some reasonable answers to these issues.