RTnet

Hard Real-Time Networking for Real-Time Linux

RTnet is an Open Soure hard real-time network protocol stack for Xenomai and RTAI (real-time Linux extensions). It makes use of standard Ethernet hardware and supports several popular NIC chip sets, including Gigabit Ethernet. Moreover, Ethernet-over-1394 support is available based on the RT-FireWire protocol stack.

RTnet implements UDP/IP, ICMP and ARP in a deterministic way. It provides a POSIX socket API to real-time user space processes and kernel modules.

To avoid unpredictable collisions and congestions on Ethernet, an additional protocol layer called RTmac controls the media access. A dedicated Ethernet segment is required to guarantee bounded transmission delays, but RTnet also includes a mechanism to tunnel non real-time traffic like TCP/IP over RTmac, thus allowing a "single-cable" solution for connecting control systems.

Some possible application domains are fieldbus replacements, distributed real-time computing, or video/audio streaming.

RTnet was originally developed by Ulrich Marx for his diploma thesis at the Institute for Systems Engineering, Real-Time Systems Group, University of Hannover (Germany). Now it is being maintained and improved by people at this institute and contributors all over the world.

News

RTnet 0.9.11 released
2009-04-15 20:00 - RTnet - Real-Time Networking for Linux
Almost exactly one year has passed since the last release, so quite a few changes piled up. We gained a some more drivers, performance and usability improvements were done and, of course, the usual kernel alignment took place.
Read More »

RTnet 0.9.10 released
2008-04-13 16:24 - RTnet - Real-Time Networking for Linux
Here it comes, finally. No revolutionary new features, just steady enhancements and fixes. We have one new driver in this release, rt_at91eth, a fix for an ugly corruption in the ICMP code, and basically everything is aligned with the latest kernel and RTDM versions again.
Read More »

RTnet 0.9.9 released
2007-03-22 11:57 - RTnet - Real-Time Networking for Linux
No major changes, just steady development. One highlight of this release might be the integration of 64-bit support via the fresh x86_64-port of Xenomai [1]. As x86_64-Xenomai is yet available via the development trunk, don't expect a production-ready combination with RTnet. Further testers are welcome!
Read More »

Site news archive »