Real time characteristics of Ethernet and its improvement

There is a growing interest in using Ethernet to support time constrained communication in process control, factory automation and other real-time applications. The paper first presents a comprehensive analysis of the temporal characteristics of traditional Ethernet and the improvements for them, then summarizes the interesting features offered by a switched Ethernet for supporting time constrained communication. Finally, the paper points that there is still lack of general means to handle the capability of switched Ethernet after investigating the QoS of switched Ethernet.