A self-adaptive protocol for broadcast LANs with variable packet length

Abstract

In this letter, a new medium-access sublayer self-adaptive protocol for broadcast networks is introduced. This new protocol is capable of operating efficiently under heavily bursty traffic conditions and can handle stations, which transmit packet of arbitrary length. TDMA, RTDMA and other fixed-assignment protocols have various drawbacks, that learning protocols such as LTDMA are known to resolve. But as a result of LTDMS's fixed-sized timeslots, reduced channel usage, wasted timeslots, as well as network equipment overloading can occur. The VPL/LTDMA protocol, which is here introduced, is tested using real LAN traffic traces and is proved to be successfully resolving the above issues. In addition it achieves a high throughput-delay performance when operating under realistic traffic conditions.