Performance of circuit switched LANs under different traffic conditions

Switched LANs are become more widely used because they can provide a higher bandwidth than LANs based on shared media. Examples of packet switched LANs include HIPPI, and switched FDDI and Ethernet. A number of studies have evaluated the performance of HIPPI networks, making simplifying assumptions about both the network and the traffic load. In this paper we present the results of a simulation study of circuit-switched LANs such as HIPPI using more realistic models for the system and the traffic. We observe changes in throughput as high as a factor of ten when we change the system and traffic parameters. We also show how packet scheduling can be used to improve performance in some cases