Two low-speed applications of Ethernet LANs

Much of the emphasis in using Ethernet type LANs has been in applications to interconnect computing facilities such as PCs, file servers, etc. in a local environment such as a single building. An equally interesting area of application of Ethernets is in situations where the speed of 10 mb/s is more than adequate, e.g. connecting several microprocessors in an industrial process control application. Two possible low-speed applications are presented in this paper. The two applications are: load balancing and multicast transmissions. In both cases the emphasis is on achieving adequate performance with minimum modification to the Ethernet protocols. These modifications demonstrate the possibility of using a LAN in a variety of applications with very little modification to the existing protocols