Ed-net; A multi-Protocol educational local area network

The last decade has witnessed tremendous productivity in the field of local area networks (LANs). The productivity has ranged from many different available commercial LANs to detailed technical analyses, performance evaluation models and simulation results. The need now arises for networks to teach students in university and engineers in industry how to build and design LANs. The purpose of this paper is to present the Ed-Net; a multi-protocol local area network for educational and design purposes. The network uses available VLSI chips that implement LAN protocols. The intelligent co-processors LAN controllers such as INTEL 82586 for the Ethernet and Western Digital WD 2840 for the token-passing are used. Also advanced encoder/decoder chips such as Seeq 8023 and Harris HD-6409 are utilized. Ed-Net can be configured as an Ethernet, or a tokenpassing bus. Number of experiments can be run on the network. These experiments range from: interfacing the main CPU to the LAN controller, memory sharing, FIFO and DMA operation, error detection, and synchronization to framing, data encryption and successful transmission and reception.