Method and apparatus for configuring an application
AssigneeSiemens Aktiengesellschaft
InventorsHarald Albrecht, Stephan Höme
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
Application developers want to incorporate and maintain only the absolutely essential TSN software in their container applications, but not complete TSN device stacks. At the same time, their TSN application containers are able to request TSN streams from the network dynamically at any time (ad hoc). For this, the TSN application containers require topology information from an Edge device (e.g., like the device access point(s) for TSN network(s)) in the simplest manner possible. A method and an apparatus are disclosed herein to solve the problem described above as a result of the required information and address tuples being provided to the container following installation and not needing to be already known during development.
Claims11
A method for configuring an application, the method comprising:
- introducing the application in a device by a container, wherein the device is configured for executing the application as an edge device, wherein the device has a network access point with a first address, wherein the device is linked to a communication network via the network access point using a Time-Sensitive Networking standard in accordance with IEEE 802.1, wherein the container has a container access point with a second address and wherein the device has a container engine that provides information about a device-internal path from the network access point to the container;
- determining, with respect to the container access point with the second address, the network access point with the first address;
- determining, with respect to the second address of the container access point and the first address of the network access point, a third address of an industrial automation management entity connected to the network access point of the device via the communication network, by virtue of a fact that access information with respect to the network access point from associated managed object information has been determined based on topology information about the communication network;
- configuring the application by obtained address information for access points by assignment of the second address, wherein the obtained address information comprises the first address of the network access point of the device, the second address of the container access point, and the third address of the industrial automation management entity;
- and
- upgrading the application for access to the communication network via the network access point of the device.
-5. (canceled)
A non-transitory computer program product configured to cause a device to:
- introduce an application in the device by a container, wherein the device is configured for executing the application as an edge device, wherein the device has a network access point with a first address, wherein the device is linked to a communication network via the network access point using a Time-Sensitive Networking standard in accordance with IEEE 802.1, wherein the container has a container access point with a second address, and wherein the device has a container engine that provides information about a device-internal path from the network access point to the container;
- determine, with respect to the container access point with the second address, the network access point with the first address;
- determine, with respect to the second address of the container access point and the first address of the network access point, a third address of an industrial automation management entity connected to the network access point of the device via the communication network;
- configure the application by obtained address information for access points by assignment of the second address, wherein the obtained address information comprises the first address of the network access point of the device, the second address of the container access point, and the third address of the industrial automation management entity;
- and
- upgrade the application for access to the communication network via the network access point of the device.
An apparatus configured to support a configuration of an application in a device having a network access point via which the device is linked to a communication network using a Time-Sensitive Networking standard in accordance with IEEE 802.1 with a first address, wherein the application is configured to be introduced in the device by a container, wherein the device is configured to execute the application as an edge device, and wherein the container has a container access point with a second address,
- wherein the apparatus is configured to request access information about a device-internal path from the network access point to the container with the application from a container engine,
- wherein the apparatus is configured to determine and store the the network access point associated with the container access point with the first address,
- wherein the apparatus is configured to determine a third address with respect to the second address of the container access point and the first address of the network access point, with respect to an industrial automation management entity connected to the network access point of the device via the communication network, by virtue of a fact that the apparatus requests access information with respect to the network access point from associated managed object information determined based on topology information about the communication network,
- wherein the apparatus is designed to configure the application by obtained address information by assignment of the second address, wherein the obtained address information comprises the first address of the network access point of the device, the second address of the container access point, and the third address of the industrial automation management entity, and
- wherein the apparatus is configured to upgrade the application for access to the communication network via the network access point of the device.
-13. (canceled)
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.