Specifications

2-7
TOKEN RING OVERVIEW
8. Through the use of simple time-out circuits, the ring has a means of
protection against a station that fails to pass the token on.
9. An Active Monitor station ensures that these rules are being followed
and can detect and recover from violations of these rules.
Advantages of Token Ring
The main advantages of using Token Ring are as follows:
• It provides a deterministic performance specification, by which the
access time (i.e., the maximum time between (n) and (n+1) use of the
token) can be determined.
• Under heavy loading the protocol is at its most efficient and will
degrade in a controllable and predictable manner.
• The physical layer provides a number of features for hardware error
detection and performance tuning.
• Token Ring provides for a number of station-management (SMT)
agents to allow network management products to monitor the
performance and collect error and other reporting statistics.
• Supports large frame sizes up to 18 kilobytes at 16 Mbps.
Disadvantages of Token Ring
The main disadvantages of using Token Ring are as follows:
• The complexity of the protocol requires an understanding of its
operation to allow for network management.
• The number of nodes is relatively low (260 per ring segment) compared
to Ethernet (1024).