A hybrid token/insertion ring LAN

A novel, hybrid protocol LAN called TORNET2 is proposed, and its performance is evaluated. TORNET2 is a ring intended for high-speed applications in the 100 Mb/s range. Short-packet, high-priority traffic is handled by the register insertion technique. Combining this protocol with the early-release token protocol for handling low-priority asynchronous traffic is the novel aspect of TORNET2. The hybrid protocol operates in such a way that high-priority packets may be embedded in low-priority packets. This results in the best possible transfer delay for the high-priority traffic. In fact, the high-priority traffic is unaffected by the presence of low-priority traffic. Low-priority traffic is not locked out by high-priority traffic, but its transfer delay performance degrades as the volume of high-priority traffic increases. An approximate performance analysis of the TORNET2 network along with simulation results to verify the analysis is presented