A high-speed slotted ring access mechanism with dynamically adaptive slot sizes

Two access mechanisms complementary in performance are the token ring and the slotted ring. While the token ring outperforms the slotted ring for long messages, the latter performs significantly better for short messages. The factor that causes this difference is the number of tokens on the ring. A new network design in which this factor has been made adaptive, resulting in a network that can be made to behave like both the token ring the slotted ring, or anything in between, i.e.. it performs optimally for any given message length, is proposed. Simulation results that show the performance gain that is achieved by using this principle are presented. The concept of transmission interruption, which intends to approach the shortest job next preemptive resume service' discipline in order to further minimize the mean transfer delay in case of a load consisting of a mixture of message lengths, is introduced.