A dynamic bandwidth-allocation-based priority mechanism for thepi-persistent protocol for MAN's

While a variety of medium access protocols have been proposed for metropolitan area networks (MANs), the problem of handling multipriority traffic effectively in these networks remains open. The authors present a simple and effective priority mechanism for an existing MAN protocol known as the p_i-persistent protocol, a probabilistic scheduling scheme that has been shown to be suitable for applications requiring large bandwidth over long, repeater-free distances. The mechanism works by clipping the low-priority stations in a controlled manner, thereby increasing the bandwidth available to the high-priority stations. This mechanism operates entirely within the framework of the basic p_i-persistent protocol and may be easily tailored to achieve specific performance goals by selection of a single operating parameter. A multipriority version of a distributed algorithm by which the stations can update their operating parameters and adapt to changing network conditions dynamically is also presented