Distributed Broadcast Channel Access
Abstract This paper presents a general approach to sharing a broadcast channel among multiple processors. There are two components to the problem of sharing a single resource: (1) How to specify the usage pattern of the resource; and (2) How to restrict access to the resource so that the specified usage pattern can be realized. One way to solve both of these problems is solved by embodying the desired usage pattern in priority update algorithms which assign unique priorities to all the users. The secobd problem then becomes that of determining the competing user who has the highest priority when the resource is free. Solutions are proposed which promise the combined advantages of ethernet (short message delay) and ringnet (high throughput).