Local Area Network (LAN) switches are increasingly being used to subdivide large LAN segments into multiple connected LAN "microsegments." A LAN switch is similar to a LAN bridge, but is typically higher in performance and has more ports. Communicatioim between stations on different segments is through 1 he LAN switch. In this paper, a performance analysis is presented for a Token Ring LAN switch for the clas!& of protocols known as request-response protocols.Request-response protocols are typical of many clientfserver applications including transaction procesrring. A performance model based on a detailed accounting of network delay components is presented. The performance model quantXes the importance of mimimizing latency within a LAN switch. Two LAN switch frame forwarding architectures are described and evaluated. The architectures are store-and-forward and cut-through frame forwarding. The performance model in this paper demonstrates that the benefits of low delay in cut-through switching extend wen to situations where attached Token Ring segments have a very high utilization.