Control unit and method for operating an industrial automation system communication network comprising a plurality of communication devices

A method for operating an industrial automation system communication network comprising a plurality of communication devices, at least one control unit controlling functions of a plurality of assigned communication devices and being assigned to at least one partition of the communication network, partitions of the communication network comprising respectively specifiable portions of system resources of assigned communication devices for specifiable resource utilization periods, the communication devices each comprising at least one transceiver which is assigned a plurality of transmit queues, each of which is granted access to the associated transceiver for a definable access time period within a definable repetition cycle, and the access time periods and repetition cycles for the transmit queues being set in the assigned communication devices by the control unit according to the resource utilization periods for the partitions, the method comprising:

• classifiying the partitions according to the access time periods and repetition cycles set in the assigned communication devices;
• classifying path reservation requests for data streams according to specified access time periods and repetition cycles;
• determining potential partitions for the path reservation requests based on matching classifications of access time periods and repetition cycles;
• checking the determined partitions to ascertain whether sufficient system resources are available for a relevant path reservation request;
• and
• assigning the relevant path reservation request to at least one determined partition, and reserving system resources required for the relevant path reservation request within the determined partition when sufficient system resources are available for the relevant path reservation request.