Interconnection of high speed token ring LANs: a switch-connection approach

Abstract

In conventional bridge-connected token ring LANs, the bridges tend to become system bottlenecks as the transmission speed of the token ring LANs becomes higher owing to the large bridge processing time as compared to the packet transmission time. To eliminate the bridge bottleneck problem in the interconnection of high speed token ring LANs, a switch-connection approach is proposed. A simple network access method is described and the delay performance of the switch-connected system is investigated and compared to that of the bridge-connected system. The range of system parameters in which the switch-connected system has better mean delay performance is identified.