CSMA/CA MAC protocols for IP-HORNET: an IP over WDM metropolitan area ring network

As data traffic increases exponentially, IP over WDM transport will replace conventional SONET transport in metropolitan area networks. Such networks will require new media access control (MAC) protocols to efficiently share network bandwidth among multiple network nodes. This paper describes and evaluates novel and practical carrier sense multiple access with collision avoidance (CSMA/CA) MAC protocols for IP over WDM ring networks that handle variable size IP packets without complex variable optical delays or centralized algorithms. Simulation results show that the proposed IP-MAC protocols are efficient and comparable to our selected benchmark and will be implemented in the IP-HORNET testbed.