Performance of a CSMA/CD Protocol for Local Area Networks

In this paper we present a performance analysis of a CSMA/CD protocol designed to effectively resolve collisions in a local area network such as Ethernet. We give expressions for the average time required to resolve a collision involving
k
stations and the average time for a particular station involved in a
k
-way collision to send its packet successfully. We also consider the efficiency of this protocol and give a lower bound for the maximum efficiency. The above analysis is independent of any particular packet arrival distribution other than the assumptions that in a successful transmission each station is equally likely to be the one transmitting, that in a collision each station is equally likely to be a participant, and that the probability of the simultaneous arrival of packets is zero.