Multiple token distributed loop local area networks: analysis

With increased data rates, the packet transmission time of a LAN could approach or even become less than the medium propagation delay. The performance of many LAN schemes degrades rapidly under these conditions. Generally, the overhead associated with the medium access protocol increases with the increase in propagation time relative to packet transmission time. In token ring networks this overhead depends on the round trip propagation delay of the channel. Several schemes, such as multiple rings (with multiple channels) and multiple access points (with multiple tokens) are proposed to decrease this overhead. In these schemes analytical and simulation results have shown improved performance. In the present paper we propose a distributed multiconnected loop topology with multiple tokens. We also present analytical results showing the packet delay performance. Finally we compare the performance of distributed multiconnected loops with multiple ring topology in terms of media access control, token coalescence and delay.