The fairness of DQDB networks with slot reuse

The paper analyzes the fairness characteristics of two previously proposed slot reuse protocols for DQDB networks. In particular, the slot reuse protocol proposed for the IEEE 802.6e standard [Hassanein et al., 1994] results in unfair steady state bandwidth allocations for some overloaded DQDB networks and can cause unbounded access delays under some stable workloads. In contrast, a previously proposed simple counter protocol results in bandwidth allocations in overload that are shown to be at least weakly fair for all workloads and optimally fair for many important workloads. This simple protocol also guarantees bounded access delays for any stable workload. A new modified counter protocol is proposed that has superior fairness characteristics to either of the previous protocols