Increasing the Efficiency of Multiple Access Protocol Simulation

Abstract

Features of the applied multiple access (MAC) protocol do strongly influence overall characteristics of local area computer networks (LANs). Alas, although performance of MAC protocols was extensively studied in last years, available exact analytical solutions are very limited in scope, and may be applied only under strongly limiting assumptions. In addition, numerical difficulties occure in computation of state probabilities (eg. [12] for CSMA-like protocols). Thus digital simulation remained a necessary tool in MAC performance study (all approximate solutions are validated with simulation!). As simulation is highly computer time consuming, every possibility of efficiency increasing is appreciated. In addition to more and more effective solutions of basic problems in simulation (random number generation, further event set scheduling) solutions specific for selected classes of applications are developed (eg. in [9] an approach specific to CSMA/CD schema was reported). Curiously enough very little has been done in context of MAC simulation as for improving the statistical inference, although available variance reduction techniques make it possible to decrease the simulation time necessary in order to achieve some desired accuracy.