High speed serial communications for control systems [SSC]

The Superconducting Super Collider Laboratory is a complex of accelerators being built in Ellis County, Texas. The SSCL control system consists of front-end processors and their associated control points remotely distributed from the Central and Regional control rooms. Control messages passing between these locations require timely (deterministic) distribution. A prototype network consisting of point-to-point links utilizing commercial T1 (1.544 Mb/s) communication boards has been implemented. These dedicated communication links will replace networking services traditionally provided for by shared medium networks like Ethernet (IEEE 802.3) and FDDI (IEEE 802.5). A seamless migration will be achieved by using packet encapsulation based on PPP (Point-to-Point Protocol, RFC 1171). All other networking functions including routing and reliable delivery are still being handled by the usual internet services. A distributed control system that currently uses Ethernet for communication is being re-implemented using these point-to-point links. We will report on throughput measurements, timing constraints and ease of transition to a point-to-point network