Performance of Voice and Data Communication on Ethernet Local Area Networks
A.P. Loh · 1990
The Ethernet communication network is a multiaccess system for local computer networking, using the techniques of carrier sense and collision detection to control access to the medium. In view of the current trends towards ISDN (Integrated Services Digital Networks), future networking systems are likely to integrate voice, data and graphic images into each work station, with the result that the communication system used to interconnect work stations will be required to transmit and receive information involving all three media. In this paper, the feasibility of combined voice and data transmission on local area networks is studied. In particular, the study addresses the manner in which the performance of CSMA/CD (Carrier Sense Multi-Access with Collision Detection) networks is affected when voice communication is superimposed on such data networks. Performance is measured via throughput, packet loss and delay under various operating parameters. Due to the difference in nature of voice and data, some system parameters were altered in order to achieve a reasonable trade-off between the various performance measures for voice and data.