Performance evaluations of a MetaRing MAC protocol integrating video and data traffics in an interconnected environment

The MetaRing is a medium access control (MAC) protocol for LANs and MANs operating at a speed of 1 Gbit/sec and above. The MetaRing MAC protocol offers its users synchronous and asynchronous types of services and can operate under two basic access control modes: buffer insertion for variable size packets, and slotted for fixed length cells. The latter mode of operation is considered in this paper. In the first part of the paper an analysis of the asynchronous type of service is performed. The analysis has been carried out on a network configuration (hereafter called scenario) which, other than being realistic, is particularly critical with respect to slot reuse. It consists of a group of equally spaced nodes sending asynchronous traffic to a gateway interconnecting the MetaRing with other communication subnetworks. Results obtained show that the MetaRing is unfair and that the unfairness depends, in particular, upon the offered load, besides the K and L protocol parameter values. In the second part of the paper we focus on the study of the traffic integration capability provided by the MetaRing MAC protocol. The results provide a strong indication that the MetaRing MAC protocol is suitable for VBR video and data traffic integrations.