MAC protocols for high-speed MANS: Performance comparisons for a family of fasnet-based protocols

The importance of Metropolitan Area Networks (MANs) is now well understood: the state of the art in fiber-optic and electronic technology makes it realistic to forecast MANs with lengths of 100 kilometers and transmission speeds of gigabits per second. In this scenario, Medium Access Control (MAC) protocols developed for the current generation of multiple-access networks are no longer viable. This paper discusses the problems encountered in developing MAC protocols for the new high-speed, long-distance MANs. A family of protocols for a dual-bus network is described, and their performance evaluated by simulation. The paper demonstrates the effects of protocol design decisions on the performance of the network, and shows that some protocols obtain very good overall performance for the distances and transmission speeds considered, while preserving the inherent fairness of cyclical access methods. © 1990.