Performance analysis of a slotted ring LAN by a single‐buffer model

Abstract

Slotted rings have been popular medium access control protocols for local area networks (LANs) since the early proposal of Cambridge and Owell rings. This paper provides a simple approximation technique for the performance analysis of a slotted ring based on a single‐buffer model in which at most one packet can be stored at each node. The technique produces approximate values of the network throughput by using an assumption which is valid for large networks and a solution of a quadratic equation whose complexity does not depend on the number of nodes in the network. It is shown by numerical examples that the present technique also gives accurate performance data for rather small networks to the extent that the relative error of the approximate throughput values is less than 0.3 percent of exact values. Since other performance measures for the single buffer model of a slotted ring can easily be calculated from the throughput, the proposed technique is very useful for evaluating the total performance of a slotted ring network. Copyright © 1994 Wiley Periodicals, Inc., A Wiley Company