Interconnection of dual bus MANs : architecture and algorithms for bandwidth allocation

Metropolitan area networks (MANs) have the potential to be interconnected in such a way that the resulting wider, composite network-subsequently referred to as the extended MAN (XMAN) or simply the network-still preserves the characteristics of the underlying encompassed MANs. This means that, if the individual MANs are capable of managing integrated services such as video, voice and data, the XMAN will also have this potential. Techniques borrowed from conventional packet switching technology (ISO 8648, for instance) requiring the use of a common internetwork protocol and time-consuming error recovery and flow control mechanisms, cannot be used to realize this capability. To overcome this problem a bandwidth management algorithm has been devised. The technical feasibility of the averall interconnection architecture is explored, and performance figures are obtained.