Robust, reliable, and deterministic networks are essential for a variety of applications. In order to provide guaranteed communication network services, Time-Sensitive Networking (TSN) unites a set of standards for time-synchronization, flow control, enhanced reliability, and management. We design the TSN-FlexTest testbed with generic commodity hardware and open-source software components to enable flexible TSN measurements. We have conducted extensive measurements to validate the TSN-FlexTest testbed and to examine TSN characteristics. The measurements provide insights into the effects of TSN configurations, such as increasing the number of synchronization messages for the Precision Time Protocol, indicating that a measurement accuracy of 15 ns can be achieved. The TSN measurements included extensive evaluations of the Time-aware Shaper (TAS) for sets of Tactile Internet (TI) packet traffic streams. The measurements elucidate the effects of different scheduling and shaping approaches, while revealing the need for pervasive network control that synchronizes the sending nodes with the network switches. We present the first measurements of distributed TAS with synchronized senders on a commodity hardware testbed, demonstrating the same Quality-of-Service as with dedicated wires for high-priority TI streams despite a 200% over-saturation cross traffic load. The testbed is provided as an open-source project to facilitate future TSN research.

翻译：稳健、可靠且确定性网络对于多种应用至关重要。为提供有保障的通信网络服务，时间敏感网络（TSN）整合了时间同步、流量控制、增强可靠性及管理等方面的标准集。我们设计了基于通用商用硬件和开源软件组件的TSN-FlexTest测试平台，以实现灵活的TSN测量。通过开展大量测量验证TSN-FlexTest测试平台并探究TSN特性，测量结果揭示了TSN配置（如增加精确时间协议的同步消息数量）的影响，表明可实现15纳秒的测量精度。TSN测量包括对时间感知整形器（TAS）在触觉互联网（TI）数据包流量流中的全面评估。这些测量阐明了不同调度与整形方法的作用，同时揭示了需实现发送节点与网络交换机同步的全局性网络控制。我们首次展示了在商用硬件测试平台上使用同步发送器的分布式TAS测量结果，证明即使面临200%过饱和交叉流量负载，高优先级TI流仍能达到与专用线路相同的服务质量。该测试平台作为开源项目发布，旨在促进未来TSN研究。