TIME-SENSITIVE TRANSMISSION OF ETHERNET TRAFFIC BETWEEN ENDPOINT NETWORK NODES

There is provided a technique of time-sensitive transmission of Ethernet traffic between source and destination nodes in IET-blind network. The source network node receives expedited and non-expedited Ethernet frames; for each non-expedited Ethernet frame: detects a pre-provisioned designated non-expedited tunnel; segments non-expedited Ethernet frame into a plurality of segments; encapsulates each segment in accordance with the designated non-expedited tunnel, wherein each encapsulated segment comprises a metadata structure added (inserted, prepended or postpended) to a payload and usable for further reassembling the frame at the destination endpoint, and wherein the metadata structure is informative, at least, of sequence numbers of the frame and the given segment and a type of segment indicative of a relative location of the given segment within a sequence of segments from the plurality of segments; and sends the encapsulated segments to the destination network node via the designated non-expedited tunnel.