DSDR: A fair and efficient access protocol for ring-topology MANs

A new media access control (MAC) protocol for ring-topology metropolitan area networks (MANs) is defined. The destination-stripping dual ring (DSDR) is defined for slotted-medium, dual-ring networks. The main feature is the destination-stripping capability, which yields a very high throughput through immediate reuse of the slots. It is shown that the protocol can be tailored for different compromises between guaranteed throughput and total throughput. On each of the two rings, guaranteed throughput, with bounded access delay, can be close to twice the medium capacity, and total throughput, under realistic hypotheses, can be close to four times the medium capacity. The maximum interval between accesses by the same station can be as low as N/2 slot times, with N stations on the network. Multicast can be supported with the same simplicity and the same cost as in other LANs and MANs.