An intelligent hub protocol for local area lightwave networks

This paper presents a protocol for packet switched optical LANs using a star topology. The key element in this network is the use of an intelligent hub, which controls the traffic flow and which provides controls for adding and removing new stations from the network. The intelligent hub allows this network design to be scalable, easy to administer and manage, and reduces the complexity and costs of the network interface devices that will be needed at each station. The network makes use of wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) as well as time division multiplexing (TDM) to fully exploit the fiber's bandwidth. Each station will have a tunable transmitter and a slow speed tunable receiver for data traffic and a fixed receiver and fixed transmitter for use on the control channel.