GT: a versatile access scheme for high throughput MANs

Group transmission (GT) is a new scheme for improving the throughput on shared dual/fold bus networks. Some schemes such as destination release, erasure nodes, previous slot information (PSI) and SP-DQDB were put forward for improving throughput of original MAN protocols such as DQDB, S++, CRMA, CBRMA and FDDI. GT improves throughput via a two-fold approach. (1) All nodes in the network are logically divided into multiple groups and each group is assigned a group code in order. (2) A post-source group slot-reuse rule is introduced by which a busy slot may be reused to carry new information (segment or request) after the busy slot departs from its source group. In contrast to destination release, erasure nodes, PSI and SP-DQDB, GT is simpler than anyone of them and may be used for either slot reuse or slot pre-use or both of them and possesses a higher capacity. GT itself performs with a high throughput.