Fast Ring: a distributed architecture and protocol for local area distributed processing

A ring-based media access control protocol and architecture, Fast Ring, which combines the best features of the token ring and contention ring, is proposed. For this protocol, a free token circulates on the ring when the ring is idle. A ready station can transmit either by capturing the token or sensing the ring idle. The protocol works in such a way that the ready node which captures the free token, before or while transmitting, is able to continue transmission. All the other contending nodes have to stop their transmissions and then send the abort signal when they receive the upstream transmission. After its transmission, the successful station puts a free token on the ring and the protocol enters the token mode. It behaves like the token ring protocol until the ring becomes idle again when all the ready nodes complete their transmissions. Comparison of the performance of Fast Ring with those of contention ring, token ring, and carrier-sense multiaccess with collision detection protocols shows that the Fast Ring outperforms all these local area network protocols over the whole throughput range at all transmission rates