Planning for the Fiber Distributed Data Interface (FDDI)
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NIST Special Publication 500-212 Computer Systems Planning for the Technology Fiber Distributed U.S. DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE Technology Administration Data Interface (FDDI) National Institute of Standards and Technology Nisr William E. Burr NflTL INST, OP STAND & TECH R.I.C. N!ST AlllDM 133D7S —ee mi100 //500-212 1993 7he National Institute of Standards and Technology was established in 1988 by Congress to "assist industry in the development of technology . needed to improve product quality, to modernize manufacturing processes, to ensure product reliability . and to facilitate rapid commercialization ... of products based on new scientific discoveries." NIST, originally founded as the National Bureau of Standards in 1901, works to strengthen U.S. industry's competitiveness; advance science and engineering; and improve public health, safety, and the environment. 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NIST Special Publication 500-212 Planning for the Fiber Distributed Data Interface (FDDI) William E. Burr Computer Systems Laboratory National Institute of Standards and Technology Gaithersburg, MD 20899 Sponsored by: Internal Revenue Service ISD: I : S : C Room 402 2500 Wilson Boulevard Arlington, VA 22201 October 1993 U.S. DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE Ronald H. Brown, Secretary TECHNOLOGY ADMINISTRATION Mary L. Good, Under Secretary for Technology NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF STANDARDS AND TECHNOLOGY Aratl Prabhakar, Director Reports on Computer Systems Technology The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has a unique responsibility for computer systems technology within the Federal government. NIST's Computer Systems Laboratory (CSL) devel- ops standards and guidelines, provides technical assistance, and conducts research for computers and related telecommunications systems to achieve more effective utilization of Federal information technol- ogy resources. CSL's responsibilities include development of technical, management, physical, and ad- ministrative standards and guidelines for the cost-effective security and privacy of sensitive unclassified information processed in Federal computers. CSL assists agencies in developing security plans and in improving computer security awareness training. This Special Publication 500 series reports CSL re- search and guidelines to Federal agencies as well as to organizations in industry, government, and academia. National Institute of Standards and Technology Special Publication 500-212 Natl. Inst. Stand. Technol. Spec. Publ. 500-212, 108 pages (Oct. 1993) CODEN: NSPUE2 U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE WASHINGTON: 1993 For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC 20402 1 Table of Contents 1 . Introduction 1 2. Overview of FDDI 2 2.1 Structure of the FDDI Standards 2 2.2 FDDI Topology 4 2.3 Physical Medium Dependent (PMD) 1 2.4 Physical Layer Protocol (PHY) 15 2.5 Medium Access Control (MAC) 17 2.6 Station Management (SMT) 22 3. Overview of FDDI-II 27 3.1 Structure of the FDDI-II Standards 27 3.2 Applications and Planning for FDDI-II 31 4. FDDI Network Configuration Considerations 34 4.1 TTRT and FDDI Performance 34 4.2 Partitioning FDDI Rings 39 5. FDDI Media 41 5.1 Optical fiber media 41 5.2 Twisted Pair Media for FDDI 46 5.3 Selecting FDDI Media 49 6. FDDI and Standards for Wiring of Office Buildings 50 6.1 Introduction to Building Wiring Standards 50 6.2 Summary of FIPS 174 Requirements 50 6.3 FDDI with structured wiring 53 6.4 Wiring Crossovers 54 7. GOSIP, GNMP, Functional Standards and FDDI 55 7.1 The GOSIP Architecture and FDDI 55 7.2 FDDI's Role in GOSIP 58 7.3 FDDI and the GNMP 58 7.4 Functional Standards 59 8. Connecting an FDDI LAN to another Network 61 8.1 Some Definitions 61 8.2 Bridges and Routers 63 8.3 Hubs and Collapsed Backbones 69 9. FDDI and Newer Emerging Network Technologies 70 9.1 HIPPI 70 9.2 Fibre Channel 71 9.3 SONET 75 9.4 Frame Relay 77 9.5 ATM LANs and B-ISDN 78 -iii- 9.6 DQDB and SMDS 83 9.7 100 Mbps Ethernet 85 Appendix A: Sources for Documents 86 Appendix B: List of Acronyms 88 Appendix C: List of References 93 Index 99 -iv- ABSTRACT: The Fiber Distributed Data Interface (FDDI) is an emerging Standard fiber optic Local Area Network (LAN) technology suitable for backbone and high performance workstation applications. FDDI will be widely used by federal agencies in the 1990's. This report describes the FDDI standards and the media that FDDI uses, and provides information about wiring for FDDI LANs and about effectively configuring FDDI LANs. It also describes the relationship of FDDI to the Government Open Systems Interconnection Profile (GOSIP) and discusses connect- ing FDDI to other networks. KEYWORDS: CDDI, dual ring network, FDDI fiber optic local network, LAN, local area network, timed token ring. -V- 1. Introduction The Fiber Distributed Data Interface (FDDI) is a standard for a 1 00 Mbps fiber optic token ring, now coming into wide use. FDDFs initial application has been primarily as a "backbone" Local Area Network (LAN), connecting together other LANs with lower data rates. Since FDDI sup- ports large physical configurations, it is also seeing use as a Metropolitan Area Network (MAN), connecting LANs together over an entire metropolitan area. These MANs may be private, however some public carriers are also offering FDDI based services. Past costs for FDDI attachment have been too high to allow widespread use of FDDI as a workstation inter- face, however these costs are falling rapidly as the volume of FDDI sales increases. FDDI is rapidly joining the IEEE 802.3 [ISO88023] and 802.5 [ISO88025] LAN standards as a com- modity network interface with attractive price and performance characteristics. While the 802.3 standard seems secure as the most common inexpensive LAN interface, as workstations become more powerful, and imaging applications become commonplace, FDDI will frequently be at- tached directly to workstations to provide the bandwidth required for image processing. Section 2 of this report provides an introduction to the FDDI standards and how they work. FDDI has been developed as a layered standard. There are now three published FDDI stand- ards; three others are essentially complete but not yet published. Two remaining alternative physical layer standards are still in development. Products that implement FDDI are now widely available. FDDI-II, an enhanced version of FDDI that includes the FDDI token ring packet service and adds an isochronous service, is discussed in section 3. Three of the four standards that comprise FDDI-II are now essentially complete. FDDI-II shares the same physi- cal media standards as FDDI. The first nascent FDDI-II products are just emerging. Section 4 describes the practical configuration limits for FDDI rings, and discusses the choice of a value for the Target Token Rotation Time, the key user controlled parameter that regulates the operation of the FDDI timed token ring protocol. Section 5 describes the various optical