In a recent release, the Industrial Internet Consortium (IIC) has announced the ongoing success of its plugfest series of the Time Sensitive Networking (TSN) Testbed and the expansion of the TSN Testbed to Europe. At the March 2017 IIC Member Meeting, in Reston, Virginia, the TSN Testbed received top ranking in the Testbed Showcase, an opportunity for IIC testbed leaders to present and be judged by their peers on the strategic value of their testbeds.
TSN is a deterministic enhancement to Ethernet, a foundational piece of the Internet of Things (IoT). The TSN Testbed applies TSN technology to a range of manufacturing automation and control vendors to display the new capabilities and value. The Testbed is enabling the early phase usage of enhancements to Ethernet standards IEEE (News - Alert) 802.1 and IEEE 802.3.
All TSN Testbed work is communicated to IEEE and Avnu, a standards organization developing the interoperability and certification based on the IEEE’s TSN. It is used to display OPC UA enabled vendor independent interoperability of real-time data and other industrial automation protocols (e.g. ODVA’s EtherNet/IP) on the same network with typical IT voice/video data.
Plugfests are face-to-face events where participants gather to test the interoperability of their enhanced products and technology. The most recent plugfest took place March 16-17 near Frankfurt, Germany. The testbed in Europe, established at Bosch Rexroth development site for IoT-related control and communication solutions in Erbach, shall enable more companies to participate in the plugfests and join the testbed. Results from this latest plugfest will be demonstrated at both the IIC booth and the OPC UA booth at Hannover Messe (News - Alert) (HMI) 2017.
Some testbed participants will also have TSN displays in their respective booths at HMI.
TSN Testbed participants include IIC members Analog Devices (News - Alert), Belden/Hirschmann, Bosch Rexroth, B&R Industrial Automation, Cisco, Hilscher, KUKA, National Instruments, Renesas Electronics, Schneider Electric, SICK AG, TTTech and Xilinx (News - Alert).