SURVNET, a Prototype Survivable Local Area Network

MITRE is investigating the use of a multiple-bus local area network architecture for making tactical command and control systems more survivable and has developed an experimental survivable network, SURVNET. The network consists of several bus segments, adaptively interconnected by microprocessors that can detect bus faults and automatically enable paths around them. Fault detection and reconfiguration algorithms exercised in the microprocessors control reconfiguration. The bus access method is an adaptation of the draft IEEE Standard 802.4 token-passing protocol. This paper describes the architecture, the algorithms, and the experimental network.