Issues of fairness in fast LANs under realistic traffic conditions

The performance of most LAN protocols breaks down when the ratio of the maximum propagation delay to the expected packet length becomes big. The performance of a very simple capacity-1 protocol, applicable to fast and possibly long bus-type networks, is discussed. The protocol is apparently unfair under uniform traffic conditions and thus, at first glance, it seems unacceptable. It is argued the protocol turns out to be completely fair under two realistic traffic scenarios that occur most commonly in a local networking environment. An example demonstrates that observing the fairness of a bus network under the uniform (unrealistic) traffic pattern may lead to deceiving conclusions.