ITC/USA 2014 Conference Proceedings / The Fiftieth Annual International Telemetering Conference and Technical Exhibition / October 20-23, 2014 / Town and Country Resort & Convention Center, San Diego, CA / Network loads close to Ethernet wire speed and latency sensitive data in a Flight Test Instrumentation (FTI) system, represent challenging requirements for FTI network equipment. Loss of data due to network congestion, overflow on the end nodes, as well as packet latency above a few hundred microseconds, can be critical during a flight test. To avoid these problems, several advanced packet filtering and network optimization functions are required in order to achieve best possible performance and thus avoid loss of data. This paper gives insight into how to properly engineer an Ethernet based FTI network and how to use advanced Ethernet switch techniques such as Quality of Service (QoS) and rate shaping.

Detta projekt har haft som mål att skapa ett redundant SDN-nätverk som ska ligga som grund för ett fiktivt företag. Företeaget ska kunna använda nätverket som vi bygger upp för att vidareutveckla detta och anpassa det efter verksamhetens behov. Nätverket byggs upp med mininet som används för att simulera en nätverksmiljö. Det fiktiva företaget ska sedan bara kunna lyfta ut nätverket från mininet ut till ett riktigt nätverk. Nätverkets funktioner, såsom protokollen STP och LACP implementeras med hjälp av programmeringsspråket python. / The goal for this project is to setup a redundant Software Defined Network for a fictive company. The company should be able to use the network for future network extension. The network will be built in mininet. Mininet is a software that is used to simulate a real network environment. The company should also be able to take the simulated network in mininet and implement it in to a real network. The protocols STP and LACP are implemented in the network by means of the programming language python.

As Ethernet based networks have become the dominant choice for Flight Test Instrumentation (FTI) network applications, it is also clear that Ethernet based camera integration and applications have yet to become more wide spread for system level design and integration. A significant customer base utilizes either separate video compression systems or even just stand-a-lone gopro cameras for recording purposes in an unsynchronized ways. The use of uncompressed high definition (HD) video from GigE Vision Ethernet cameras for flight test applications is a significant issue in managing the large volumes of data produced by the cameras and forwarding them to any 1000BASE-T(x) switch port without packet loss and significant delays. Of course an easy approach to overcome this issue would be to just increase the network bandwidth from 1000BASE-T(x) to 10GBASE-SR, but most FTI systems just moved to 1000BASE-T(x) in the past years and therefore changing the overall system hardware is cost prohibited. One concern has been the use of compression algorithms to reduce the required video bandwidth, with the negative side effect that the image quality reduces and end-to-end latency increases, which is not acceptable for some applications. Further, it is important that data from cameras is available to a number of different multicast consumers within the FTI network, for example workstations, recorders and telemetry systems. These video data stream also require synchronization so that they can be analyzed in post processing.

This thesis focuses on redundancy in data networks and on technologies which are used to achieve high availability in network infrastructure. This thesis is based on industry standards published by well-known standardization authorities. One proprietary technology which can effectively replace these standards and simplify the whole network is also presented in more detail. The theoretical part individually describes all such technologies and standards. The practical part deals with an appropriate combination of these technologies and their application in a specific product environment. This work is meant to describe the whole concept of high availability in network infrastructure and should be instrumental in understanding how these technologies are deployed in practice.