Configuring VLAN Interfaces

Introduction

TSN streams are transmitted over Virtual LANs (VLANs). Bridges use the VLAN priority information (PCP) to identify Stream Reservation (SR) traffic classes which are handled according to the Forward and Queuing Enhancements for Time-Sensitive Streams (FQTSS) mechanisms described in Chapter 34 of the IEEE 802.1Q standard. This tutorial will cover how to setup a VLAN interface for TSN application.

VLAN is supported in Linux* via virtual networking interface. Any packet sent through the VLAN interface is automatically tagged with the VLAN information (such as ID and PCP). Any packet received from that interface belongs to the VLAN.

Configuring the Interface

The VLAN interface is created using the ip-link command from iproute2 project which is pre-installed by the majority of Linux distributions. The following example creates a VLAN interface for TSN usage. The example assumes eth0 is the physical interface.

sudo ip link add link eth0 name eth0.5 type vlan id 5 egress-qos-map 2:2 3:3

The egress-qos-map argument defines a mapping of Linux internal packet priority (SO_PRORITY) to VLAN header PCP field for outgoing frames. The format is FROM:TO with multiple mappings separated by spaces. This example maps SO_PRIORITY 2 into PCP 2 and SO_PRIORITY 3 into PCP 3. For further information about command arguments, see ip-link(8) manpage.

VLAN configuration is required on Talkers, Listeners, and Bridges.