A study of priority at the transport layer in local area networks

In the computer integrated manufacturing (CIM) environment and other integrated services types of networks, short time critical messages share network resources with bulk data transfer, creating the need for priority schemes. The OSI (open systems interconnection) reference model defines priority to be primarily a part of the functionality of the medium access control sublayer of the data link layer. Results from a simulation study that establish the need for an additional priority scheme at the transport layer over and above the existing scheme at the MAC (medium access control) layer are presented