Throughput-Delay Performance of Interconnected CSMA Local Area Networks

The interconnection of two local area networks, each of which connects a large population of users via a carrier-sense multipleaccess (CSMA) channel is considered. In each network, a bridge node receives internetwork packets from the local users and forwards them to the bridge node of the other network via a point-to-point link; the bridge node of the destination network queues these internetwork packets for subsequent broadcasting to the local users. For the multiplexing of the user transmissions and the bridge node transmissions on the available broadcast channel in each network, frequency division, and contention are considered. The throughput-delay characteristics of the interconnected system operating under the above multiplexing techniques are found and comparisons are made. It is shown that contention multiplexing can yield system performance comparable to that of frequency division multiplexing, while requiring no hardware or software modification of either network in the interconnected system.