Patent ID: 9197576
Filing Date: 2015-11-24
Classification: H04L

Abstract:
1. A network interface for an industrial control device configured to communicate with a plurality of other industrial control devices on an industrial network, comprising: a plurality of ports, each port having a transmit circuit and a receive circuit, wherein: the receive circuit is configured to receive a plurality of incoming data packets from each of the other industrial control devices, at least one of the ports is configured to be connected to the industrial network, the transmit circuit includes a plurality of queues, and each queue has an execution priority with respect to the other queues; and a switch circuit configured to read an identifier from each incoming data packet and transfer each incoming data packet to one of the queues as a function of the identifier wherein: data packets from multiple other industrial control devices are assigned to each of the plurality of queues as each data packet is received, the switch circuit is further configured to execute a transmission schedule at a periodic interval, the transmission schedule defines at least a first and a second priority window within the periodic interval, the first priority window has a first predefined duration and has a plurality of queues assigned to be transmitted within the first predefined duration, the second priority window has a second predefined duration and zero or more queues assigned to be transmitted within the second predefined duration, wherein the second predefined duration is different from the first predefined duration, and the switch circuit synchronously executes the transmission schedule on each of the ports to transmit the data packets from each of the queues according to the execution priority of each queue assigned to each priority window.