Methods to increase reliability and ensure determinism in a White Rabbit Network

White Rabbit (WR) is a time-deterministic, low-latency Ethernet-based network which enables transparent, sub-ns accuracy timing distribution. High reliability is an important issue in WR's design, since unavailability of the accelerator’s control system will directly translate into expensive down-time of the machine. The presentation explains methods devised and employed in WR to ensure that its steady-state characteristics (sub-ns synchronization, low latency, determinism) are preserved in network transients (e.g.: reconfiguration due to failure).