telecommunication Telecommunication is the transmission of information by various types of technologies over wire, radio, optical, or other electromagnetic systems. It has its origin in the desire of humans for communication over a distance greater than tha ...

, a distributed-queue dual-bus network (DQDB) is a distributed multi-access network that (a) supports integrated

communications Communication (from la, communicare, meaning "to share" or "to be in relation with") is usually defined as the transmission of information. The term may also refer to the message communicated through such transmissions or the field of inqui ...

using a dual bus and distributed queuing, (b) provides access to local or

metropolitan area networks A metropolitan area network (MAN) is a computer network that interconnects users with computer resources in a geographic region of the size of a metropolitan area. The term MAN is applied to the interconnection of local area networks (LANs) i ...

, and (c) supports connectionless data transfer, connection-oriented data transfer, and isochronous communications, such as voice communications. IEEE 802.6 is an example of a network providing DQDB access methods.

Concept of operation

The DQDB Medium Access Control ( MAC) algorithm is generally credited to Robert Newman who developed this algorithm in his PhD thesis in the 1980s at the

University of Western Australia The University of Western Australia (UWA) is a public research university in the Australian state of Western Australia. The university's main campus is in Perth, the state capital, with a secondary campus in Albany, Western Australia, Albany an ...

. To appreciate the innovative value of the DQDB MAC algorithm, it must be seen against the background of

LAN Lan or LAN may also refer to: Science and technology * Local asymptotic normality, a fundamental property of regular models in statistics * Longitude of the ascending node, one of the orbital elements used to specify the orbit of an object in sp ...

protocols at that time, which were based on broadcast (such as ethernet IEEE 802.3) or a ring (like

Token Ring Token Ring network IBM hermaphroditic connector with locking clip. Screen contacts are prominently visible, gold-plated signal contacts less so. Token Ring is a computer networking technology used to build local area networks. It was introduc ...

IEEE 802.5 and

FDDI Fiber Distributed Data Interface (FDDI) is a standard for data transmission in a local area network. It uses optical fiber as its standard underlying physical medium, although it was also later specified to use copper cable, in which case i ...

). The DQDB may be thought of as two token rings, one carrying data in each direction around the ring. This improves reliability which is important in

Metropolitan Area Networks A metropolitan area network (MAN) is a computer network that interconnects users with computer resources in a geographic region of the size of a metropolitan area. The term MAN is applied to the interconnection of local area networks (LANs) i ...

(MAN), where repairs may take longer than in a LAN and Wi-Fi because the damage may be inaccessible. The DQDB standard IEEE 802.6 was developed while

ATM ATM or atm often refers to: * Atmosphere (unit) or atm, a unit of atmospheric pressure * Automated teller machine, a cash dispenser or cash machine ATM or atm may also refer to: Computing * ATM (computer), a ZX Spectrum clone developed in Mo ...

(

Broadband ISDN In the 1980s, the telecommunications industry expected that digital services would follow much the same pattern as voice services did on the public switched telephone network, and conceived an end-to-end circuit switched service, known as Broadband ...

) was still in early development, but there was strong interaction between the two standards. ATM cells and DQDB frames were harmonized. They both settled on essentially a 48-byte data frame with a 5-byte header. In the DQDB algorithm, a distributed queue was implemented by communicating queue state information via the header. Each node in a DQDB network maintains a pair of state variables which represent its position in the distributed queue and the size of the queue. The headers on the reverse bus communicated requests to be inserted in the distributed queue so that upstream nodes would know that they should allow DQDB cells to pass unused on the forward bus. The algorithm was remarkable for its extreme simplicity. Currently DQDB systems are being installed by many carriers in entire cities, with lengths that reach up to with speeds of a DS3 line (44.736 Mbit/s). Other implementations use optical fiber for a length of up to 100 km and speeds around 150 Mbit/s.

References

{{Authority control Metropolitan area networks Local area networks Link protocols