Modeling and simulation of medium-access-protocols in local area networks

Local Area Networks are becoming the most common way of connecting a series of workstations to allow them to communicate with each other and share common resources. It is therefore becoming more and more important for network designers and installers to evaluate the ability of local area networks that use different communication protocols to handle the desired message loads. An issue in LAN performance is related to the properties of the medium access protocol, i.e., its throughput-delay characteristics. By medium access protocol we refer to the MAC (Medium Access Control) sublayer as defined by the IEEE-802 and the ISOOSI protocols. This paper focuses on two general classes of protocols: the first is known as Carrier Sense Multiple Access with Collision Detection (CSMA/CD) and the second is known as Carrier Sense Multiple Access with Collision Avoidance (CSMA/CA) or Bit-Mapped protocol. Two variations of each class are examined, and comparisons are made between the classes and the variants of each class.