Station reconfiguration on FDDI trunk rings

The US Navy is selecting a et of local area networking standards, under the name SAFENET, for use on tactical platforms. The set of standards incorporate the FDDI local area network (LAN) at the physical and data link layers. The SAFENET group has taken an FDDI feature (the hold policy option) and used it as the basis of a data path hop (or switch) capability. The paper provides a discussion of FDDI trunk ring reconfiguration both in a normal mode of operation and when the hold policy is in effect. Operational issues of concern to tactical network survivability are discussed. A discussion of the issues that result from the use of optical switches, the use of the hold policy, the use of dual media access controllers, the resolution of addresses and the association of one data path to one of two media access controllers is provided