[time-nuts] IEEE 1588v2 on CISCO IE 3010

[Wojciech Owczarek]

Hi,

Excuse the lengthy reply; I hope it helps however. Excuse if I'm stating
the obvious here and there.

I have not worked with the IE series, but other than physical build options
like DIN rail mount and IP67 (and protocol support), they are largely just
normal Cisco IOS Ethernet switches. IE3000 and IE2000 (newer) support PTPv2
in boundary and transparent clock modes, here's an example:

http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/switches/lan/cisco_ie3000/software/release/12-2_50_se/configuration/guide/ie3000scg/swptp.html

What your switch will support (and if it will), will depend on the software
image installed, not only the hardware. You may want to upgrade to the
latest IOS 15.x as well.

Not sure how familiar with Cisco IOS you are, but their CLI syntax for PTP
on this kit is common - material from the link above should work on your
platform. The easiest thing to do is just explore the CLI - see what
PTP-related commands you have available in config mode, and what
PTP-related commands you can see in exec mode ("show" commands). If you
can't find it, then you will likely need a different software image. Since
you're not under a support contract, you may need to search the Internet
for images and you might get lucky. If you have not worked with IOS, this
is a very popular platform and there is an abundance of beginners' guides
available.

If not Boundary Clock, the switch should at least support End-to-End
Transparent Clock operation. In fact, it should be enabled for E2E
Transparent by default (only the base ports; uplink modules don't support
PTP). It is not clear what PTP profile they support though, but this being
an Industrial Ethernet switch (and Layer 2), it may only run PTP over
Ethernet transport, and not IP/UDP multicast.

An easy test is to run a PTP conversation between a master and a slave
through the switch, do a packet capture and look for the presence of values
in the CorrectionField of Sync, (Follow Up in two-step mode), Delay Request
(in one-step it's on egress towards master) and Delay Response. If
CorrectionField is non-zero anywhere, you have a TC in the path.

Some vendors will not tell you this in the datasheets, but some Transparent
Clock implementations may only support PTP One-Step mode or Two-Step mode,
not both. For example, if you're running one-step and the switch is not
populating CorrectionField in Sync messages, it doesn't support one-step.
If you're running two-step and CorrectionField is still in Sync, not in
FollowUp, the switch only supports two-step; etc.

Regards,
Wojciech


On 15 September 2015 at 22:06, Andrew Symington <
andrew.c.symington at gmail.com> wrote:

> Dear All
>
> I have managed to get hold of a 24-port rack mount Cisco switch
> (model: IE-3010-24TC) which, according to the datasheet, is "IEEE 1588v2
> hardware ready". I am developing a Quality of Time stack for Linux as part
> of a research project, and I would like to use this switch to synchronize a
> test bed comprising of 20 BeagleBone Black slave nodes.
>
> Despite the advertised IEEE 1588v2 support, none of the Cisco software
> documentation covers PTP configuration. Cisco support is not being very
> helpful to me, as the switch is not covered by a Smartnet contract.
>
> Does anybody have experience configuring PTP on this switch, which they are
> willing to share with me?
>
> Regards
> Andrew Symington
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-- 
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Wojciech Owczarek