CONTENTION PROTOCOLS FOR RING NETWORKS WITH LARGE BANDWIDTH-DELAY PRODUCTS.

As the bandwidth-delay product of ring networks increases, conventional access protocols. such as the gated token protocol. become less efficient. We propose overcoming this problem with contention-based access protocols. We discuss the necessary properties of any contention ring access protocol and present two specific proposals. Some simple analysis and simulation is done to determine the performance of these protocols. Our protocols are shown to have better end-to-end delay than a gated token protocol. We also simulate another contention protocol called the hybrid protocol. proposed by Bhargava, et al. It is shown that the simple protocols described in this paper have performance comparable to that of the more complex hybrid protocol on networks with high bandwidth-delay products. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]