Deterministic VLAN Traffic Management for Shared Network Capacity
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Solution Overview
Problem
Industrial networks face challenges in maintaining deterministic behavior in shared physical networks, where high-priority traffic can consume all capacity, leading to starvation of lower-priority traffic, and network separation leads to fragmentation and security issues.
Innovation Solution
Implementing rate-limited VLANs with prioritization and bandwidth management to ensure deterministic behavior, ensuring critical traffic gets its required capacity while preventing high-priority traffic from consuming all available network resources.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of operation
If all automation equipment shares the same physical network, then information exchange is simplified, but critical traffic may fail to obtain required capacity and security problems arise
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments the shared physical network into multiple VLANs (Virtual Local Area Networks) to separate different automation equipment and traffic types. This allows all equipment to share the physical infrastructure while logically dividing the network into isolated segments, preventing one segment from consuming all network capacity and ensuring security through isolation.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent changes network parameters by implementing rate limiting mechanisms that dynamically control the amount of traffic each VLAN can consume. This ensures that critical automation traffic receives guaranteed capacity while preventing any single VLAN from monopolizing network resources, thus maintaining reliability in the shared network environment.
2Speed
If high-priority traffic is given higher capacity, then critical traffic performance is improved, but lower-priority traffic may be completely starved
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements dynamic rate limiting that adjusts traffic capacity allocation in real-time based on network conditions. Critical traffic receives higher priority and guaranteed capacity when needed, while lower-priority traffic automatically receives available capacity when critical traffic demand is low, preventing complete starvation and maintaining overall network productivity.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent changes traffic handling parameters by implementing multi-level priority queues and rate limiting thresholds. These parameter changes enable the network to flexibly adjust capacity allocation between high and low priority traffic, ensuring critical operations maintain performance while preventing total starvation of non-critical traffic through configurable minimum guarantees.
Data Source
AI summary
A method for providing a deterministic behavior in a shared physical network is disclosed. The method may be performed in a device controlling a Virtual Local Area Network, VLAN, of the shared physical network. The method includes rate limiting amount of inbound traffic for each traffic flow in the VLAN and assigning a respective priority for each traffic flow in the VLAN.