PERFORMANCE OF A CSMA/CD PROTOCOL FOR LOCAL AREA NETWORKS.

A performance analysis is presented for a carrier-sense multiaccess/collision detection (CSMA/CD) protocol designed to effectively resolve collisions in a local area network such as Ethernet. Expressions are given for the average time required to resolve a collision involving k stations and the average time for a particular station involved in a k-way collision to send its packet successfully. The efficiency of this protocol is considered and the authors give a lower bound for the maximum efficiency. The analysis is independent of any particular packet arrival distribution other than the assumptions that in a successful transmission each station is equally likely to be a participant, and that the probability of the simultaneous arrival of packets is zero.