Emergence of critical rates in multiple access network control schemes

A new approach to analyzing the efficiency of multiple access network control schemes is presented. The novelty is based on looking at the throughput allowed by the dynamics of the protocol itself in a way that is decoupled from the issue of packet generation by making a "busy network" approximation. The method allows the critical output bandwidth needed to ensure that a model for a LAN does not accumulate packets unboundedly in its queues to be computed. This is an emergent property of the network that follows from decentralized microscopic laws. The result follows from the stationary distribution property of ergodic Markov chains.