PROBABILITY-DISTRIBUTION OF THE RECEIVER BUSY TIME IN A MULTICASTING LOCAL LIGHTWAVE NETWORK

Wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) has the ability to utilize the enormous bandwidth offered by optical networks using today's electroni cs. A reservation-based multicasting protocol for local lightwave netw orks was examined in Borella and Mukherjee, 1995. If implemented prope rly, multicasting allows the use of scarce network resources more effi ciently than unicasting. On the other hand, a multicasting protocol is usually more complex than a unicasting protocol. An analytical model of a multicasting protocol can enable its comparison with a simpler bu t less efficient unicasting protocol. We present an approximate analyt ical solution for the average packet delay in a local lightwave networ k, which employs the Multicast Scheduling Algorithm (Borella and Mukhe rjee, 1995) as its medium-access control (MAC) protocol. First, we dev elop an approximate analytical solution for the probability distributi on of the receiver busy time. We demonstrate and explain some interest ing and unobvious behavior of this distribution. Then, using the recei ver busy time distribution, we calculate the maximum receiver throughp ut and the average packet delay. Results from the analytical solution match very well with those obtained from simulation. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.