A self-adaptive protocol for broadcast LAN´s with variable packet length

An adaptive medium access control (MAC) protocol for broadcast networks is introduced, which can operate efficiently under highly bursty traffic conditions and can handle stations transmitting packets of arbitrary length. The proposed Variable Packet Length Adaptive Protocol (VPLAP) belongs to the family of learning-automata-based protocols, which resolves most drawbacks that fixed-assignment protocols like time-division multiple access (TDMA) and RTDMA have. LTDMA, although belonging to this same family, suffers from reduced channel usage, wasted timeslots as well as network equipment overloading due to its fixed-sized timeslots. VPLAP, on the other hand, is tested using real LAN traffic traces and is proved not only to be successfully resolving the above issues but also being able to achieve a high throughput-delay performance when operating under realistic traffic conditions.