RTnet 0.9.9

RTnet is an Open Soure hard real-time network protocol stack for Xenomai and RTAI (real-time Linux extensions). RTnet project makes use of standard Ethernet hardware and supports several popular NIC chip sets, like 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 this institute and by several other contributors all over the world.
Enhancements:
- enabled IRQ sharing for rt_8139too and rt_e1000
- added x86_64 support (via Xenomai)
- enabled 2.6.20 build
- added loopback testing mode to rtnet script
- fixed cleanup bug in tdma
- fixed cleanup race in rt_8139too