White Rabbit installation

Mockup of a White Rabbit installation with several switches and optical fibers visible. White Rabbit provides sub-nanosecond accuracy and picoseconds precision of synchronization for large distributed systems. It also allows for deterministic and reliable data delivery. White Rabbit allows you to precision time-tag measured data and lets you trigger data taking in large installations while at the same time using the same network to transmit data. The project was started within an effort to renovate the current CERN control and timing system. Since then, it has expanded beyond this initial application. One of the reasons for such expansion is the open source paradigm used in the project for the development of hardware, gateware and software. Another reason is the compatibility with standards. The White Rabbit Network is based on existing IEEE standards while extending these standards in a backward-compatible way if needed to meet CERN's requirement.