COMSATS Virtual Campus

Islamabad

CSC 339 Computer Communication & Networks

IEEE 802.5: Token Ring Network

 Token Ring is formed by the nodes connected in ring format as shown in the diagram
below. The principle used in the token ring network is that a token is circulating in the
ring and whichever node grabs that token will have right to transmit the data.
 Whenever a station wants to transmit a frame it inverts a single bit of the 3-byte token
which instantaneously changes it into a normal data packet. Because there is only one
token, there can atmost be one transmission at a time.
 Since the token rotates in the ring it is guarenteed that every node gets the token with in
some specified time. So there is an upper bound on the time of waiting to grab the token
so that starvation is avoided.
 There is also an upper limit of 250 on the number of nodes in the network.
 To distinguish the normal data packets from token (control packet) a special sequence is
assigned to the token packet. When any node gets the token it first sends the data it wants
to send, then recirculates the token.

If a node transmits the token and nobody wants to send the data the token comes back to the
sender. If the first bit of the token reaches the sender before the transmission of the last bit, then
error situation araises. So to avoid this we should have:

1|Page
propogation delay + transmission of n-bits (1-bit delay in each node ) > transmission of the
token time

A station may hold the token for the token-holding time. which is 10 ms unless the installation
sets a different value. If there is enough time left after the first frame has been transmitted to
send more frames, then these frames may be sent as well. After all pending frames have been
transmitted or the transmission frame would exceed the token-holding time, the station
regenerates the 3-byte token frame and puts it back on the ring.

Modes of Operation

1. Listen Mode: In this mode the node listens to the data and transmits the data to the next
node. In this mode there is a one-bit delay associated with the transmission.

2. Transmit Mode: In this mode the node just discards the any data and puts the data onto
the network.

2|Page
 3. By-pass Mode: In this mode reached when the node is down. Any data is just bypassed.
There is no one-bit delay in this mode.

Token Ring Using Ring Concentrator

One problem with a ring network is that if the cable breaks somewhere, the ring dies. This
problem is elegantly addressed by using a ring concentrator. A Token Ring concentrator simply
changes the topology from a physical ring to a star wired ring. But the network still remains a
ring logically. Physically, each station is connected to the ring concentrator (wire center) by a
cable containing at least two twisted pairs, one for data to the station and one for data from the
station. The Token still circulates around the network and is still controlled in the same manner,
however, using a hub or a switch greatly improves reliability because the hub can automatically
bypass any ports that are disconnected or have a cabling fault. This is done by having bypass
relays inside the concentrator that are energized by current from the stations. If the ring breaks or

3|Page
station goes down, loss of the drive current will release the relay and bypass the station. The ring
can then continue operation with the bad segment bypassed.

Who should remove the packet from the ring ?

There are 3 possibilities-

1. The source itself removes the packet after one full round in the ring.
2. The destination removes it after accepting it: This has two potential problems. Firstly,
the solution won't work for broadcast or multicast, and secondly, there would be no way
to acknowledge the sender about the receipt of the packet.
3. Have a specialized node only to discard packets: This is a bad solution as the
specialized node would know that the packet has been received by the destination only
when it receives the packet the second time and by that time the packet may have actually
made about one and half (or almost two in the worst case) rounds in the ring.

Thus the first solution is adopted with the source itself removing the packet from the ring after a
full one round. With this scheme, broadcasting and multicasting can be handled as well as the
destination can acknowledge the source about the receipt of the packet (or can tell the source
about some error).

Token Format

The token is the shortest frame transmitted (24 bit)

MSB (Most Significant Bit) is always transmitted first - as opposed to Ethernet

SD AC ED

SD = Starting Delimiter (1 Octet)

AC = Access Control (1 Octet)
ED = Ending Delimiter (1 Octet)

Starting Delimiter Format:

J KOJKOOO

J = Code Violation
K = Code Violation

Access Control Format:

P PPTMRRR

T=Token
T = 0 for Token

4|Page
T = 1 for Frame
When a station with a Frame to transmit detects a token which has a priority equal to or less than
the Frame to be transmitted, it may change the token to a start-of-frame sequence and transmit
the Frame

P = Priority
Priority Bits indicate tokens priority, and therefore, which stations are allowed to use it. Station
can transmit if its priority as at least as high as that of the token.

M = Monitor
The monitor bit is used to prevent a token whose priority is greater than 0 or any frame from
continuously circulating on the ring. If an active monitor detects a frame or a high priority token
with the monitor bit equal to 1, the frame or token is aborted. This bit shall be transmitted as 0 in
all frame and tokens. The active monitor inspects and modifies this bit. All other stations shall
repeat this bit as received.

R = Reserved bits
The reserved bits allow station with high priority Frames to request that the next token be issued
at the requested priority.

Ending Delimiter Format:

J K1JK11E

J = Code Violation
K = Code Violation
I = Intermediate Frame Bit
E = Error Detected Bit

Frame Format:

MSB (Most Significant Bit) is always transmitted first - as opposed to Ethernet

SD AC FC DA SA DATA CRC ED FS

SD=Starting Delimiter(1 octet)

AC=Access Control(1 octet)
FC = Frame Control (1 Octet)
DA = Destination Address (2 or 6 Octets)
SA = Source Address (2 or 6 Octets)
DATA = Information 0 or more octets up to 4027
CRC = Checksum(4 Octets)
ED = Ending Delimiter (1 Octet)
FS=Frame Status

5|Page
Starting Delimiter Format:

J K0JK000

J = Code Violation
K = Code Violation

Access Control Format:

P PPTMRRR

T=Token

T = “0” for Token,

T = “1” for Frame.

When a station with a Frame to transmit detects a token which has a priority equal to or less than
the Frame to be transmitted, it may change the token to a start-of-frame sequence and transmit
the Frame.

P = Priority
Bits Priority Bits indicate tokens priority, and therefore, which stations are allowed to use it.
Station can transmit if its priority as at least as high as that of the token.

M = Monitor
The monitor bit is used to prevent a token whose priority is greater than 0 or any frame from
continuously circulating on the ring. if an active monitor detects a frame or a high priority token
with the monitor bit equal to 1, the frame or token is aborted. This bit shall be transmitted as 0 in
all frame and tokens. The active monitor inspects and modifies this bit. All other stations shall
repeat this bit as received.

R = Reserved bits the reserved bits allow station with high priority Frames to request that the
next token be issued at the requested priority

Frame Control Format:

F F CONTROL BITS (6 BITS)

FF= Type of Packet-Regular data packet or MAC layer packet

Control Bits= Used if the packet is for MAC layer protocol itself

Source and Destination Address Format:

The addresses can be of 2 bytes (local address) or 6 bytes (global address).

6|Page
local address format:

I/G (1 BIT) NODE ADDRESS (15 BITS)

alternatively

I/G (1 BIT) RING ADDRESS (7 BITS) NODE ADDRESS (8 BITS)

The first bit specifies individual or group address.

universal (global) address format:

I/G (1 BIT) L/U (1 BIT) RING ADDRESS (14 BITS) NODE ADDRESS (32 BITS)

The first bit specifies individual or group address.

The second bit specifies local or global (universal) address.

local group addresses (16 bits):

I/G (1 BIT) T/B(1 BIT) GROUP ADDRESS (14 BITS)

The first bit specifies an individual or group address.

The second bit specifies traditional or bit signature group address.

Traditional Group Address: 2Exp14 groups can be defined.

Bit Signature Group Address: 14 grtoups are defined. A host can be a member of none or any
number of them. For multicasting, those group bits are set to which the packet should go. For
broadcasting, all 14 bits are set. A host receives a packet only if it is a member of a group whose
corresponding bit is set to 1.

universal group addresses (16 bits):

I/G (1 BIT) RING NUMBER T/B (1 BIT) GROUP ADDRESS (14 BITS)

The description is similar to as above.

Data Format:

No upper limit on amount of data as such, but it is limited by the token holding time.

Checksum:

The source computes and sets this value. Destination too calculates this value. If the two are
different, it indicates an error, otherwise the data may be correct.

7|Page
Frame Status:

It contains the A and C bits.

A bit set to 1: destination recognized the packet.

C bit set to 1: destination accepted the packet.

This arrangement provides an automatic acknowledgement for each frame. The A and C bits are
present twice in the Frame Status to increase reliability in as much as they are not covered by the
checksum.

Ending Delimiter Format:

J K1JK1IE

J = Code Violation
K = Code Violation
I = Intermediate Frame Bit
If this bit is set to 1, it indicates that this packet is an intermediate part of a bigger packet, the last
packet would have this bit set to 0.
E = Error Detected Bit
This bit is set if any interface detects an error.

This concludes our description of the token ring frame format.

Token Ring Network (Contd...)

Phase Jitter Compensation :

In a token ring the source starts discarding all it's previously transmitted bits as soon as they
circumnavigate the ring and reach the source. Hence, it's not desirable that while a token is being
sent some bits of the token which have already been sent become available at the incoming end
of the source. This behavior though is desirable in case of data packets which ought to be drained
from the ring once they have gone around the ring. To achieve the aforesaid behavior with
respect to tokens, we would like the ring to hold at least 24 bits at a time. How do we ensure
this?

Each node in a ring introduces a 1 bit delay. So, one approach might be to set the minimum limit
on the number of nodes in a ring as 24. But, this is not a viable option. The actual solution is as
follows. We have one node in the ring designated as "monitor". The monitor maintains a 24
bits buffer with help of which it introduces a 24 bit delay. The catch here is what if the clocks of
nodes following the source are faster than the source? In this case the 24 bit delay of the monitor
would be less than the 24 bit delay desired by the host. To avoid this situation the monitor
maintains 3 extra bits to compensate for the faster bits. The 3 extra bits suffice even if bits are 10
% faster. This compensation is called Phase Jitter Compensation.

8|Page
Handling multiple priority frames

Each node or packet has a priority level. We don't concern ourselves with how this priority is
decided. The first 3 bits of the Access Control byte in the token are for priority and the last 3 are
for reservation.

P M R
PPT RR

Initially the reservation bits are set to 000. When a node wants to transmit a priority n frame, it
must wait until it can capture a token whose priority is less than or equal to n. Furthermore, when
a data frame goes by, a station can try to reserve the next token by writing the priority of the
frame it wants to send into the frame's Reservation bits. However, if a higher priority has already
been reserved there, the station cannot make a reservation. When the current frame is finished,
the next token is generated at the priority that has been reserved.

A slight problem with the above reservation procedure is that the reservation priority keeps on
increasing. To solve this problem, the station raising the priority remembers the reservation
priority that it replaces and when it is done it reduces the priority to the previous priority.

Note that in a token ring, low priority frames may starve.

Ring Maintenance

Each token ring has a monitor that oversees the ring. Among the monitor's responsibilities are
seeing that the token is not lost, taking action when the ring breaks, cleaning the ring when
garbled frames appear and watching out for orphan frames. An orphan frame occurs when a
station transmits a short frame in it's entirety onto a long ring and then crashes or is powered
down before the frame can be removed. If nothing is done, the frame circulates indefinitely.

 Detection of orphan frames: The monitor detects orphan frames by setting the monitor
bit in the Access Control byte whenever it passes through. If an incoming frame has this
bit set, something is wrong since the same frame has passed the monitor twice. Evidently
it was not removed by the source, so the monitor drains it.
 Lost Tokens: The monitor has a timer that is set to the longest possible tokenless interval
: when each node transmits for the full token holding time. If this timer goes off, the
monitor drains the ring and issues a fresh token.
 Garbled frames: The monitor can detect such frames by their invalid format or
checksum, drain the ring and issue a fresh token.

The token ring control frames for maintenance are:

Control
Name Meaning
field
Duplicate
00000000 Test if two stations have the same address
address test

9|Page
 00000010 Beacon Used to locate breaks in the ring
00000011 Claim token Attempt to become monitor
00000100 Purge Reinitialize the ring
Active monitor
00000101 Issued periodically by the monitor
present
Standby monitor Announces the presence of potential
00000110
present monitors

The monitor periodically issues a message "Active Monitor Present" informing all nodes of its
presence. When this message is not received for a specific time interval, the nodes detect a
monitor failure. Each node that believes it can function as a monitor broadcasts a "Standby
Monitor Present" message at regular intervals, indicating that it is ready to take on the monitor's
job. Any node that detects failure of a monitor issues a "Claim" token. There are 3 possible
outcomes :

1. If the issuing node gets back its own claim token, then it becomes the monitor.
2. If a packet different from a claim token is received, apparently a wrong guess of monitor
failure was made. In this case on receipt of our own claim token, we discard it. Note that
our claim token may have been removed by some other node which has detected this
error.
3. If some other node has also issued a claim token, then the node with the larger address
becomes the monitor.

In order to resolve errors of duplicate addresses, whenever a node comes up it sends a

"Duplicate Address Detection" message (with the destination = source) across the network. If
the address recognize bit has been set on receipt of the message, the issuing node realizes a
duplicate address and goes to standby mode. A node informs other nodes of removal of a packet
from the ring through a "Purge" message. One maintenance function that the monitor cannot
handle is locating breaks in the ring. If there is no activity detected in the ring (e.g. Failure of
monitor to issue the Active Monitor Present token...) , the usual procedures of sending a claim
token are followed. If the claim token itself is not received besides packets of any other kind, the
node then sends "Beacons" at regular intervals until a message is received indicating that the
broken ring has been repaired.

Other Ring Networks

The problem with the token ring system is that large rings cause large delays. It must be made
possible for multiple packets to be in the ring simultaneously. The following ring networks
resolve this problem to some extent :-

Slotted Ring :

In this system, the ring is slotted into a number of fixed size frames which are continuously
moving around the ring. This makes it necessary that there be enough number of nodes (large
ring size) to ensure that all the bits can stay on the ring at the same time. The frame header

10 | P a g e
contains information as to whether the slots are empty or full. The usual disadvantages of
overhead/wastage associated with fixed size frames are present.

Register Insertion Rings :

This is an improvement over slotted ring architecture. The network interface consists of two
registers : a shift register and an output buffer. At startup, the input pointer points to the
rightmost bit position in the input shift register .When a bit arrives it is in the rightmost empty
position (the one indicated by the input pointer). After the node has detected that the frame is not
addressed to it, the bits are transmitted one at time (by shifting). As new bits come in, they are
inserted at the position indicated by the pointer and then the contents are shifted. Thus the
pointer is not moved. Once the shift register has pushed out the last bit of a frame, it checks to
see if it has an output frame waiting. In case yes, then it checks that if the number of empty slots
in the shift register is at least equal to the number of bits in the output frame. After this the output
connection is switched to this second register and after the register has emptied its contents, the
output line is switched back to the shift register. Thus, no single node can hog the bandwidth. In
a loaded system, a node can transmit a k-bit frame only if it has saved up a k-bits of inter frame
gaps.

11 | P a g e
Two major disadvantages of this topology are complicated hardware and difficulty in the
detection of start/end of packets.

Contention Ring

The token ring has primarily two problems:

 On light loads, huge overhead is incurred for token passing.

 Nodes with low priority data may starve if there is always a node with high priority data.

A contention ring attempts to address these problems. In a contention ring, if there is no

communication in the ring for a while, a sender node will send its data immediately, followed by
a token. If the token comes back to the sender without any data packet in between, the sender
removes it from the ring. However under heavy load the behavior is that of a normal token ring.
In case a collision, each of the sending nodes will remove the others' data packet from the ring,
back off for a random period of time and then resend their data.

IEEE 802.4: Token Bus Network

In this system, the nodes are physically connected as a bus, but logically form a ring with tokens
passed around to determine the turns for sending. It has the robustness of the 802.3 broadcast
cable and the known worst case behavior of a ring. The structure of a token bus network is as
follows:

12 | P a g e
Frame Structure

A 802.4 frame has the following fields:

 Preamble: The Preamble is used to synchronize the receiver's clock.

 Starting Delimiter (SD) and End Delimiter (ED): The Starting Delimiter and Ending
Delimiter fields are used to mark frame boundaries. Both of them contain analog
encoding of symbols other than 1 or 0 so that they cannot occur accidentally in the user
data. Hence no length field is needed.
 Frame Control (FC): This field is used to distinguish data frames from control frames.
For data frames, it carries the frame's priority as well as a bit which the destination can
set as an acknowledgement. For control frames, the Frame Control field is used to specify
the frame type. The allowed types include token passing and various ring maintenance
frames.
 Destination and Source Address: The Destination and Source address fields may be 2
bytes (for a local address) or 6 bytes (for a global address).
 Data: The Data field carries the actual data and it may be 8182 bytes when 2 byte
addresses are used and 8174 bytes for 6 byte addresses.
 Checksum: A 4-byte checksum calculated for the data. Used in error detection.

Ring Maintenance:

Mechanism:

13 | P a g e
When the first node on the token bus comes up, it sends a Claim_token packet to initialize the
ring. If more than one station send this packet at the same time, there is a collision. Collision is
resolved by a contention mechanism, in which the contending nodes send random data for 1, 2, 3
and 4 units of time depending on the first two bits of their address. The node sending data for the
longest time wins. If two nodes have the same first two bits in their addresses, then contention is
done again based on the next two bits of their address and so on.

After the ring is set up, new nodes which are powered up may wish to join the ring. For this a
node sends Solicit_successor_1 packets from time to time, inviting bids from new nodes to join
the ring. This packet contains the address of the current node and its current successor, and asks
for nodes in between these two addresses to reply. If more than one nodes respond, there will be
collision. The node then sends a Resolve_contention packet, and the contention is resolved
using a similar mechanism as described previously. Thus at a time only one node gets to enter
the ring. The last node in the ring will send a Solicit_successor_2 packet containing the
addresses of it and its successor. This packet asks nodes not having addresses in between these
two addresses to respond.

A question arises that how frequently should a node send a Solicit_successor packet? If it is sent
too frequently, then overhead will be too high. Again if it is sent too rarely, nodes will have to
wait for a long time before joining the ring. If the channel is not busy, a node will send a
Solicit_successor packet after a fixed number of token rotations. This number can be configured
by the network administrator. However if there is heavy traffic in the network, then a node would
defer the sending of bids for successors to join in.

There may be problems in the logical ring due to sudden failure of a node. What happens when a
node goes down along with the token? After passing the token, a node, say node A, listens to the
channel to see if its successor either transmits the token or passes a frame. If neither happens, it
resends a token. Still if nothing happens, A sends a Who_follows packet, containing the address
of the down node. The successor of the down node, say node C, will now respond with a
Set_successor packet, containing its own address. This causes A to set its successor node to C,
and the logical ring is restored. However, if two successive nodes go down suddenly, the ring
will be dead and will have to be built afresh, starting from a Claim_token packet.

When a node wants to shutdown normally, it sends a Set_successor packet to its predecessor,
naming its own successor. The ring then continues unbroken, and the node goes out of the ring.

The various control frames used for ring maintenance are shown below:

Frame Control Field Name Meaning

Claim token during ring
00000000 Claim_token
maintenance
00000001 Solicit_successor_1 Allow stations to enter the ring
00000010 Solicit_successor_2 Allow stations to enter the ring
00000011 Who_follows Recover from lost token
00000100 Resolve_contention Used when multiple stations

14 | P a g e
 want to enter
00001000 Token Pass the token
00001100 Set_successor Allow the stations leave the ring

Priority Scheme:

Token bus supports four distinct priority levels: 0, 2, 4 and 6.

0 is the lowest priority level and 6 the highest. The following times are defined by the token bus:

 THT: Token Holding Time. A node holding the token can send priority 6 data for a
maximum of this amount of time.
 TRT_4: Token Rotation Time for class 4 data. This is the maximum time a token can
take to circulate and still allow transmission of class 4 data.
 TRT_2 and TRT_0: Similar to TRT_4.

When a station receives data, it proceeds in the following manner:

 It transmits priority 6 data for at most THT time, or as long as it has data.
 Now if the time for the token to come back to it is less than TRT_4, it will transmit
priority 4 data, and for the amount of time allowed by TRT_4. Therefore the maximum
time for which it can send priority 4 data is= Actual TRT - THT - TRT_4
 Similarly for priority 2 and priority 0 data.

This mechanism ensures that priority 6 data is always sent, making the system suitable for real
time data transmission. In fact this was one of the primary aims in the design of token bus.

15 | P a g e