A new approach to highly fault-tolerant communications based upon a ring network for application in manufacturing industry

The reliability and fault-tolerance of LANs within an industrial environment may be improved by the adoption of fibre-optic internode connections, an enhanced form of MAP, and a ring topology. The network proposed supports a real-time fault-detection system which may be based on one or a combination of the following techniques: A recovery block approach with associated acceptance tests; process timeout or hang analysis, which is based on the predicted behaviour of communicating processes and a permitted time slice allocated for specific activities, failure of a predicted behaviour pattern indicating a failure of the process; and functional series analysis of dependent events independent of time intervals