How to Build a Real-Time Ethernet Network

To many readers, the title of this article is absurd. The idea that Ethernet could ever be used in real-time applications is at best wildly optimistic, and at worst flat out dangerous. Ethernet is famously unreliable because it does not establish a unique, dedicated connection between one sender and one receiver. Unless a dedicated connection can be introduced into this chaos, Ethernet has no role in real-time networking. This paper describes an innovative way to overcome this inherent limitation of Ethernet.