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、可靠且确定性的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，时间敏感网络融合了一套用于时间同步、流量控制、增强可靠性及管理的标准。我们采用通用商用硬件与开源软件组件设计了TSN-FlexTest试验平台，以实现灵活的TSN测量。通过大量测量实验验证了TSN-FlexTest试验平台的有效性，并深入研究了TSN特性。测量结果揭示了TSN配置的影响，例如增加精确时间协议的同步消息数量可达到15纳秒的测量精度。TSN测量包含了对时间感知整形器在触觉互联网数据包流中的全面评估。这些测量阐明了不同调度与整形方法的效果，同时揭示了需要一种能够同步发送节点与网络交换机的普适性网络控制机制。我们首次在商用硬件试验平台上展示了分布式TAS与同步发送端的测量结果，证明尽管存在200%的过饱和交叉流量负载，高优先级TI流仍可获得与专用线路相同的服务质量。该试验平台以开源项目形式发布，旨在促进未来TSN研究。