Broadcast networks
A link with multiple addressable receivers
- Addressed packets are carried one at a time
- All receivers see all the packets
- Receivers pick out packets with own addresses
Addressing is simple
- Address filtering by receivers
- Receivers may have multiple addresses
Arbitration is more difficult
- Centralized scheme -- a central 'arbiter' grants access to one device at a time
- Simpler implementation
- Need to consider a single point of failure
- Distributed scheme -- all senders cooperate in implementing arbitration
- Distributed algorithm
- Scheduling and contention