Local network interconnection schemes and their availability analysis

Various methods for interconnecting local area networks (LANs) are studied, both direct interconnection schemes, and backbone network interconnection schemes. The latter can be either broadcast networks (bus or ring) or switched networks. For a ring-based broadcast backbone network interconnections scheme, the authors assume that the counter-rotating ring is used. For the direct interconnection scheme, they assume that eight LANs are so connected that the underlying topology is a hypercube. For the switched-backbone network interconnection scheme, they assume that the topology of the backbone network is the hypercube. The reliability and availability of the different schemes are analyzed. Numerical results indicate that under the set of assumptions made, the direct interconnection scheme has the highest reliability and availability, followed by the bus-based interconnection scheme, the ring-based interconnection scheme, and the switched backbone interconnection scheme, in that order.<>