The utilization of priorities on token ring networks

The authors theorize that, in a normal environment where the network is not overloaded, no packet priority levels should be implemented, and that the use of multiple priorities will generally degrade overall performance. They suggest that for priority operation to be meaningful, priority service must be given at the point of the service bottleneck, which generally is not network access, but rather higher-level processing (e.g. OSI protocols). They further argue that, if a message has not been treated expeditiously prior to its bid for network access, assigning a high network-access priority does little to decrease its latency. Results from simulations made of the IEEE 802.5 token ring and the Fiber Data Distributed Interface token ring are presented to reinforce the authors´ thesis