Performance of a new LAN for real-time traffic

Abstract Emerging versions of distributed real-time systems employ sensor fusion and distributed intelligent knowledge bases and thus require repid interchange of data between processors and subsystems. Physically distributed systems are usually interconnected by one of the established local area network architectures. Established LAN standards address, primarily, the needs of non-real-time data traffic. A new LAN architecture, Instanet, which incorporates a logically separate channel to arbitrate on the access rights of different priorities of traffic has been developed to support the needs of distributed real-time systems. This paper gives an overview of the Instanet architecture and presents analytical and simulation results of its performance under different traffic loadings.