Fault tolerant and integrated token ring network

This thesis is a study of communication protocols (token ring, FDDI, and ISDN), microcontrollers (68HC 1EVB), and fault tolerance schemes. One of the major weaknesses of the token ring network is that if a single station fails, the entire system fails. A scheme involving a combination of hardware and timer interrupts in the software has been designed and implemented which deals with this risk. Software and protocols have been designed and applied to the network to reduce the chance of bit faults in communications. ISDN frame format proved to be exceptional in its capacity to carry echoed data and a large variety of tokens which could be used by the stations to test the data. By its very nature, the token ring supplied another major fault detection device by allowing the data to be returned and tested at its source. The resulting network was successful

Performance of buffer insertion LANs

This thesis presents an evaluation of the performance of some ring local area network protocols, specifically the buffer insertion ring and the token ring. Both dual and single versions of each are considered, and performance statistics are obtained by measurements on real networks, by mathematical analysis, and by computer simulation. New packet routing protocols for dual contrarotating buffer insertion and token ring networks are described and their performance is examined. It is found that, due to the bandwith reuse properties of the routing methods, maximum throughputs of 800% and 200% are achievable, for the dual buffer insertion ring and the dual token ring respectively

Advanced information processing system for advanced launch system: Avionics architecture synthesis

The Advanced Information Processing System (AIPS) is a fault-tolerant distributed computer system architecture that was developed to meet the real time computational needs of advanced aerospace vehicles. One such vehicle is the Advanced Launch System (ALS) being developed jointly by NASA and the Department of Defense to launch heavy payloads into low earth orbit at one tenth the cost (per pound of payload) of the current launch vehicles. An avionics architecture that utilizes the AIPS hardware and software building blocks was synthesized for ALS. The AIPS for ALS architecture synthesis process starting with the ALS mission requirements and ending with an analysis of the candidate ALS avionics architecture is described

Quality of Service over Specific Link Layers: state of the art report

The Integrated Services concept is proposed as an enhancement to the current Internet architecture, to provide a better Quality of Service (QoS) than that provided by the traditional Best-Effort service. The features of the Integrated Services are explained in this report. To support Integrated Services, certain requirements are posed on the underlying link layer. These requirements are studied by the Integrated Services over Specific Link Layers (ISSLL) IETF working group. The status of this ongoing research is reported in this document. To be more specific, the solutions to provide Integrated Services over ATM, IEEE 802 LAN technologies and low-bitrate links are evaluated in detail. The ISSLL working group has not yet studied the requirements, that are posed on the underlying link layer, when this link layer is wireless. Therefore, this state of the art report is extended with an identification of the requirements that are posed on the underlying wireless link, to provide differentiated Quality of Service

Simulation analysis of FDDI network using NETWORK II.5 software package

In recent years, one of the most exciting advances in media has been the use of fiber optics in LANs. The bandwidth provided by Fiber Optic Technology has drastically increased the number of new applications that can be supported by communication networks. In order to support a variety of services, in 1986, the American National Standard Institute (ANSI) Accredited Standards Committee (ASC) X3, and the ASC X3T9.5 Task Group developed a new standard; the Fiber Distributed Data Interface (FDDI) [1]. This is a high speed (100 Mbps) optical communication network based on a token passing mode of operation. The Medium Access Control (MAC) Protocol selected for this network attempts to provide priority services, as well as bounded delay transmission for real time applications [2]. This thesis presents results for the Voice-Data performance of the Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol, selected for the FDDI network, using the NETWORK 11.5 [6] software package. This protocol can provide priority services to different types of traffic, as well as guarantee bounded delays for real-time applications. The effect of various system parameters on performance is investigated

Building a generalized distributed system model

The key elements in the second year (1991-92) of our project are: (1) implementation of the distributed system prototype; (2) successful passing of the candidacy examination and a PhD proposal acceptance by the funded student; (3) design of storage efficient schemes for replicated distributed systems; and (4) modeling of gracefully degrading reliable computing systems. In the third year of the project (1992-93), we propose to: (1) complete the testing of the prototype; (2) enhance the functionality of the modules by enabling the experimentation with more complex protocols; (3) use the prototype to verify the theoretically predicted performance of locking protocols, etc.; and (4) work on issues related to real-time distributed systems. This should result in efficient protocols for these systems

Analysing TDMA with slot skipping

We propose a schedulability analysis for a particular class of time division multiple access (TDMA) networks, which we label as TDMA/SS. SS stands for slot skipping, reflecting the fact that a slot is skipped whenever it is not used. Hence, the next slot can start earlier in benefit of hard real-time traffic. In the proposed schedulability analysis, we assume knowledge of all message streams in the system, and that each node schedules messages in its output queue according to a rate monotonic policy (as an example). We present the analysis in two steps. Firstly, we address the case where a node is only permitted to transmit a maximum of one message per TDMA cycle. Secondly, we generalise the analysis to the case where a node is assigned a budget of messages per TDMA cycle it may transmit. A simple algorithm to assign budgets to nodes is also presented