SURVNET: A Fault Tolerant Local Area Network
J. L. Katz, B. D. Metcalf · Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE · 1987
In response to the Department of Defense's need to enhance the survivability of command and control systems, The MITRE Corporation developed SURVNET, a survivable fiber optic local area network. The network supports data communications with a fault-tolerant, distributed architecture capable of continued communication despite media failure and node outages. SURVNET is configured as a modified fiber-optic broadcast bus. The physical and data link layers are implemented with a combination of IEEE 802.3 (Ethernet) and an augmented version of IEEE 802.4 token passing bus protocols. Special nodes in the network, incorporating fault-tolerant software, are doubly connected to the fiber bus. Periodically, these nodes broadcast a self-addressed test message to determine if continuity exists on the network segment between the node's two physically separate connections. If a discontinuity is detected, the node utilizes its two connections to bridge between the isolated bus segments.