Backbone network simulations: a comparative study

Technical Report · Fri Jun 29 04:00:00 EDT 1984

OSTI ID:6155113

Engdal, A

Local Area Networks (LAN's) interconnected by some sort of high-capacity backbone network are emerging as a common overall network concept for large institutions. There are many alternative technologies available to establish backbones: baseband networks such as Ethernet, broadband, based broadcast networks, token ring networks, and an increasing number of digital PBX's that have LAN interfaces to high bandwidth switched data channels. The LAN's will connect to the backbones via gateways. The gateways are not readily available off the shelf, partly because of the lack of sufficient standards. There is however an extensive work going on to establish such gateways for different LAN and backbone technologies. The present work focuses on the backbone part, although many of the models may be equally applicable for LAN simulation. The reason why we have focused on the backbone is the present LBL effort to plan a laboratory-wide, resource-sharing network that shall provide communication links among all laboratory facilities. A backbone facility for LAN's will be an essential part of such a network. Performance Analysts Workbench System has been used to do the simulation work reported here. PAWS is a general tool for simulating computer and communication systems. It was developed some years ago, but has been greatly improved recently. One aspect of this work has been to gain experience with the use of the new version of PAWS for computer network simulations.

• Research Organization: Lawrence Berkeley Lab., CA (USA)
• DOE Contract Number: AC03-76SF00098
• OSTI ID: 6155113
• Report Number(s): LBL-18132; ON: DE85006874
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS
990200* -- Mathematics & Computers
COMPARATIVE EVALUATIONS
COMPUTER NETWORKS
COMPUTERIZED SIMULATION
CONTROL SYSTEMS
SIMULATION