Industrial real-time networking for Linux can be achieved by combining Time-Sensitive Networking (TSN), OPC UA FX, and Deterministic Networking (DetNet). They provide together an open communication stack for industrial control, edge computing, and converged OT/IT networks.

Industrial automation has traditionally relied on proprietary fieldbus technologies such as EtherCAT and PROFIBUS. These systems provide deterministic communication but lock deployments into proprietary vendor protocols, and some, like PROFIBUS, require dedicated cabling separate from standard IT infrastructure.

Time-Sensitive Networking (TSN) extends Ethernet (IEEE 802.1Q) with deterministic timing and reliability features, industrial control applications normally require. Mainline Linux supports the major parts of TSN through the kernel networking subsystem and user-space tools without requiring out-of-tree patches, covering the majority of TSN-capable hardware.

With TSN, OT real-time traffic and conventional IT traffic share the same Ethernet infrastructure. Non-real-time applications use the full Linux networking stack and its broad ecosystem while the TSN ensures that this traffic does not affect the timing of latency-sensitive flows.

For participants in a TSN deployment, interoperability across vendors is more important than any single implementation’s performance advantage. TSN’s value is the ecosystem: open  standards that allow equipment from different manufacturers to share a network without vendor lock-in.