Context Matters: Lessons Learned from Emulated and Simulated TSN Environments

Security and precise clock synchronization are crucial in modern Time Sensitive Networking (TSN) systems. However, deployment validation is challenging due to many different, incompatible, and inaccessible implementations of TSN and related standards and the complexity of involved system artifacts. This aspect makes ensuring proper functionality and performance difficult and requires thorough evaluation and validation to ensure a system's robustness. In this work, we analyze various platforms, using hardware and simulations as an evaluation tool. We present the lessons learned during real-world deployments of the Precision Time Protocol (PTP) and MACsec. We identify the challenges of combining numerous sensors and propose how to possibly overcome the former using open-source solutions. To protect sensitive PTP traffic and other TSN protocols, we evaluate MACsec as a solution and determine its performance implications. Our findings clarify requirements for future deployments of TSN systems. Simulation as a supporting tool for TSN experimentation is discussed, and its limitations are explored. Lastly, we highlight how different evaluation approaches can provide an overall view of the system under test.