TOKEN RING LOCAL AREA

NETWORK
• Number of stations interconnected in the form
of a ring through point-to-point links.
• Each station acts as a repeater and regenerates
the signals it receives on one link and sends
them forward on the next link after a delay of
at least one bit.
• When A wants to send data to D, A breaks the ring and
inserts its frame with the destination (D) and source (A)
addresses.
• The frame passes through the stations B and C which
act as repeaters and forward the frame to the next link.
• Station D finds its address on the frame and copies it.
• The frame continues its journey and returns back to
station A.
• Station A removes the frame from the ring and stops
further transmission.
Three modes of stations
1. Repeater mode: The received signals are regenerated and transmitted n
the outgoing link. There is at least one bit delay in the shift register.
2. Insert mode: The ring is broken and the station sends its own frame on
the outgoing link. The incoming signals are received but are not sent on
the ring again.
3. Copy mode: The station regenerates the received signals and sends them
on the outgoing link. It also copies the received signals for its use.
MEDIA ACCESS CONTROL IN
TOKEN RING LAN
• Access to the ring for transmitting a frame is
controlled by use of a token.
• The token is passed from station to station around
the ring.
• The physical locations of the stations on the ring
determine the sequence of passing the token.
• When a station has frames to transmit, it seizes
the token.
• It holds the token and sends its one or more
frames and then releases the token for the next
station on the ring.
• Token Holding Time
– A station can hold the token for a maximum predefined period called
Token Holding Time (THT)
– Typical value is 10 ms, which limits the maximum frame size to about
4500 octets at 4 Mbps
• Early Token Release
– A station can release the token immediately after transmitting the last
octet of its data frame. This is called early release option and is adopted
in 16 Mbps token ring.
• Alternatively, it holds the token till it removes the entire frame
from the ring, i.e. till the last octet of the frame returns to it.
 RING SIZE
• When none of the stations on the ring has any frame to send, the
token circulates in the ring for any station to pick up. In such
situation the leading bits of the token frame may corrupt the trailing
bits of the frame if the size of the ring is not long enough.
• Let us calculate the minimum size (circumference) of the ring for a
4 Mbps token ring LAN. The token is 3 octets long as we shall see
later.
• Time for transmitting a bit at 4 Mbps : 0.25 ms
• Time required for transmitting 24 bits of the token frame : 6 ms
• Cable length travelled by the leading bit in 6 ms : 198x6 = 1188 m
• (Propagation speed = 1.98 x108 m/s)
• If the ring size is less than 1188 m, the leading bits of the token will
hit the trailing bits and corrupt the token frame.
• For 16 Mbps minimum token ring size comes
to about 300 metres.
• This limitation is overcome by providing a
constant 24-bit shift register in the ring. This
shift register is introduced in the ring by one of
the stations designated as active monitor
station.
• Active monitor station carries out several other
functions also.
 STANDARDS FOR TOKEN
RING LAN
• At the physical layer, the specified bit rates are 4 and 16
Mbps.
• The line code used is differential Manchester.
• Usually STP(Shielded Twisted pair) cable is used for
token rings.
• Typical values maximum segment length between two
stations and maximum number of stations in a ring are
as follows:
• 4 Mbps (STP cable) : Segment length 385 m, number of
stations 260
• 16 Mbps (STP cable) : Segment length 173 m, number
of stations 136
 IEEE 802.5 MAC Frame Format
• Token frame Format is three byte long and
consists of start delimiter byte, access control
byte, and end delimiter byte.
• Data frames vary in size depending on the size
of data field.
• Control frames do not have data field
• Preamble is not required
• Start delimiter (SD). It is one octet long unique symbol pattern that marks
the start of the frame. J and K enable identification of the start delimiter.
Differential Manchester Code violation property of J and K bits is used for
their detection
• Access control (AC). It is one octet long field containing priority bits (P),
token bit (T), monitoring bit (M), and reservation bits (R).
• The token bit (T) distinguishes a token frame from data/control frame. It is 0
in the token frame and 1 in the data/control frame.
• A station in repeater mode waits for the token bit to send the data. If it finds
that token bit is 0, it seizes the token by changing over to insert mode and
breaks the ring. The station then inserts 1 in place of 0 at the token bit
position and the token frame gets converted into data/control frame.
• Frame control (FC). It is one octet long field and distinguishes data
and control frames.
– FF=01 Data frame that contains LLC frame in the data field.
– FF=00, Control frame. The six Z bits indicate the control function.
– Z-bits.................Control function
– 000011..............Claim Token (CT)
– 000010..............Beacon
– 000100..............Purge
– 000101..............Active Monitor Present (AMP)
– 000000..............Standby Monitor Present (SMP)

• Destination address. The destination address field is 6 octets long.

• Source address. The source address field is also 6 octets long.
• Data field. It can have 0 or more octets. The maximum size of the data
frame(and therefore the maximum size of data field) is determined by
bit rate and the Token Holding Time (THT). Typical maximum length of
data field is 4500 octets for 4 Mbps LAN and 18000 octets for 16 Mbps
LAN.
• Frame check sequence. The frame check sequence is 4 octets long and
contains CRC code. It checks on DA, SA, FC, and data fields.
• End delimiter. It is one octet long and contains a unique symbol pattern as
below that marks the end of a token or data frame:
– J and K are special symbols that violate the differential Manchester code and
identify the end delimiter.
– E-bit is error bit. When a frame passes by a station, the station carries out FCS
check on fly and if an error is detected, it sets E-bit to 1.
– I-bit is set to 1 by the sending station if there are more frames to follow. It
• Frame status. This field is one octet long. It contains two address
recognized bits (A-bits) and two frame copied bits (C-bits). Every frame is
sent with AC = 00. When a frame passes by a station having address same
as in the DA field, the station sets A-bit to 1 indicating to the frame
originating station that the destination station is alive on the ring. If the
destination station is also able to copy the frame, it sets C-bit also to 1.
– AC = 00, Addressed station is not on the ring.
– AC = 11, Frame has been copied by the addressed station.
– AC = 10, Addressed station is on the ring but the frame is not copied.
– AC = 01, Invalid value of the AC field.
Persistent Circulating Frames
• Normal operation of token ring LAN requires the sending
station to remove the frame which it released on the ring
after the frame returns back to it. It is possible that the
frame is not removed from the ring due to some error
condition and it circulates persistently on the ring. Some
situations when this happens are given below:
– The sending station goes down immediately after releasing the
frame on the ring.
– There is some error in the SA field and therefore the sending
station does not recognize its own frame.
– A new station enters the ring and activates its RIU relay when a
frame was crossing its RIU.
– The frames gets damaged and is not removed by the source.
• Persistent circulating frames need to be removed from
the ring because the ring cannot be used by any station.
There is also the need to generate new token.
• Responsibility of removing such frames is on the active
monitor station. M bit of AC field enables the active
monitor station to detect and remove the persistent
circulating frames.
• A frame when released on the ring by the originating
station has M = 0 . The active monitor station sets M =
1 in the frame when the frames pass by it.
• If this frame is not removed by the originating station,
the second trip of the frame on the ring is immediately
detected by the active monitor station when it finds M
bit already set to 1. The active monitor station removes
the frame, cleans the ring by sending a purge frame and
then, generates a new token.