ABSTRACT
This chapter briefly discusses simulation of local area networks (LANs) that use Carrier Sense Multiple Access with Collision Detection (CSMA/CD) as an access protocol. It describes the assumptions used in the simulation. In CSMA/CD-based local area bus networks, the transmission medium is open ended. During transmission of their information packets, all stations monitor transmitted information packets on the transmission medium. The information on the medium is compared with what each station is transmitting. The simulation program is written in turbo C and is based upon the event-scheduling approach. It is self-driven and needs generation of random numbers according to a desired probability distribution function. The simulation program has four major sections: initialization, processing, control, and output. The output results are presented in terms of the average delay per packet, the average throughput, the average utilization, and the average collision rate.
