Test environment for the evaluation of IEEE 1588 solutions including high precission PPS output performance measurements

IEEE 1588-2008 Standard for a Precision Clock Synchronization Protocol for Networked Measurement and Control Systems has been introduced to provide high quality inband clock synchronization in distributed measurement and control systems. We have been actively involved in the development of IEEE 1588 implementations for Linux on the x86 (PC) platform in the last years. During these years we have developed a test environment that makes it possible to develop and test our solutions remotely in a controlled remote server room with minimum physical human interaction. The paper introduces this test environment first. The test environment uses remote access and virtualization technologies in an extensive way, making possible not only seamless remote development and test, but low-cost implementation also. In the second part of the paper the first measurement results of our current IEEE 1588 development is detailed. Our work is an extension of the standard Linux IEEE 1588 software for Pulse Per Second (PPS) logic output using standard Intel Network Interface Cards only. Our initial results show that we can achieve sub 100ns PPS precision on standard (non-real-time) x86 Linux.