RMT: A novel algorithm for reducing multicast traffic in HSR protocol networks

The high-availability seamless redundancy (HSR) protocol is one of the most important redundancy IEC standards that has garnered a great deal of attention because it offers a redundancy with zero recovery time, which is a feature that is required by most of the modern substation, smart grid, and industrial field applications. However, the HSR protocol consumes a lot of network bandwidth compared to the Ethernet standard. This is due to the duplication process for every sent frame in the HSR networks. In this paper, a novel algorithm known as the reducing multicast traffic (RMT) is presented to reduce the unnecessary redundant multicast traffic in HSR networks by limiting the spreading of the multicast traffic to only the rings that have members associated with that traffic instead of spreading the traffic into all the network parts, as occurs in the standard HSR protocol. The mathematical and the simulation analyses show that the RMT algorithm offers a traffic reduction percentage with a range of about 60-87% compared to the standard HSR protocol. Consequently, the RMT algorithm will increase the network performance by freeing more bandwidth so as to reduce HSR network congestion and also to minimize any intervention from the network administrator that would be required when using traditional traffic filtering techniques.