COLLISION-FREE PROTOCOL: BINARY COUNTDOWN METHOD
By Moses Paul
Computer networks is basically concerned about efficient transmission and reception of data.
Hence, the network itself is a home to huge number of networking devices trying transmit and
receive data at various times. The medium through which these activities take place are often
shared. A platform of this kind is prone to collision of data from various sources. This is the case
when more than one sources tries to transmit data simultaneously via a shared medium or channel.
The transmitted data is bound to garbled. This event is called collision.
The Medium Access Control (MAC) layer of the OSI model is responsible for handling collision
of frames. Collision – free protocols are developed so that collisions do not occur. Protocols like
Carrier Sense Multiple Access with Collision Detection (CSMA/CD) and CSMA/CA nullifies the
possibility of collisions once the transmission channel is acquired by any station. However,
collision can still occur during the contention period if more than one stations starts to transmit at
the same time. The occurrence of collision adversely affects the performance of the system,
especially when the bandwidth-delay product is large, such as when the cable is long and the
frames are short. Collisions also make the time to send a frame irregular, which is not a good fit
for real-time traffic such as voice over IP. CSMA/CD is not universally applicable.
Collision-free protocols resolves collision in the contention period and so the possibilities of
collisions are eliminated. Collision-free protocols pay constant overhead to achieve
performance guarantee and are very effective when network load is high. There are a number
of methods and techniques implored in handling collision that occurs during the contention period.
Example include, Bit-map Protocol, Binary Countdown, Limited Contention Protocols and
Adaptive Tree Walk Protocol. As per the requirement of this paper we shall focus only on Binary
Countdown method.
Binary Countdown Protocol
The problem with the basic bit-map protocol, and by extension token passing, is that the overhead
is 1 bit per station, so it does not scale well to networks with thousands of stations. To address this
limitation the Binary countdown method was developed. In this method, binary addresses are used.
Each station is assigned a binary address. The binary addresses are bit strings of equal lengths. For
example, if there are 4 stations, they may be assigned the binary addresses 0001, 1001, 1100, and
1011. All stations wanting to communicate broadcast their addresses. The station with higher
address gets the higher priority for transmitting. This method implicitly assumes that the
transmission delays are negligible so that all stations see asserted bits essentially instantaneously.
To avoid conflicts, an arbitration rule must be applied: as soon as a station sees that a high-order
bit position that is 0 in its address has been overwritten with a 1, it gives up. In the example above,
if stations 0001, 1001, 1100, and 1011 are all trying to get the channel, in the first bit time the
stations transmit 0, 1, 1, and 1, respectively. The station with 0001 upon seeing 1001 give up for
the current round. In the second bit time the stations transmit 1, 0, 0. Station 1001 and 1011 give
up and the winner is 1100 because it has the highest address. After winning the bidding, it may
now transmit a frame, after which another bidding cycle starts. This process is illustrated in the
diagram below.
Figure 1. Binary Countdown protocol showing how a station is selected
Binary countdown protocol has the property that higher-numbered stations have a higher priority
than lower-numbered stations, which may be either good or bad, depending on the context.
In summary, the procedure begins with each node intending to transmit a frame broadcasting its
address. The addresses of the bidding nodes are compared starting from the most significant bit,
which is the first number in the sequence, representing the highest value in the byte. All the nodes
whose value is a zero at this bit position are knocked out, if there is still more than one node in
contention, the next bit along is compared. Again, those with 1 stay in and those with 0 are out.
This process continues along the bits of the address until there is only one node left and that nodes
gets control of the media. The binary countdown method is also called bit dominance. Although,
in this example, 1 always wins, the system could work equally by nominating a 0 as the winner.
Application of Binary Countdown
As we already mentioned above, Binary countdown protocol like other collision-free protocols is
used in the Medium Access Control Layer to resolve collision that may occur during the contention
period.
Limitation of Binary Countdown Protocol
Protocol is that the nodes with higher address always wins. Hence this creates a priority which is
highly unfair and hence undesirable.
Conclusion
The quest to eliminate factors that could impede the transmission process has been a consistent
one. Every solution that emerged as a result of this quest improves the previous solutions and pave
the way for better solutions in the future. Binary countdown protocol can be likened to this analogy.
It brought improvement to Bit-map method and token ring passing while paving the way for
Adaptive Tree Walk Protocol. This paper has highlighted the working principle of binary
countdown protocol alongside its efficiency when load is high and its poor performance on light
load.
References
Tanenbaum, Andrew S., and Wetherall David J. Computer Networks. Pearson, 2011.
Arushi, “Collision-free Protocols”, https://www.tutorialspoint.com/collision-free-protocols
20/10/2019
Geeksforgeeks “Collision-Free Protocols in Computer Network”,
https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/collision-free-protocols-in-computer-network/ 20/10/2019
Dheeraj Sanghi, Computer Networks (CS425), “CSMA with Collision Avoidance ”,
https://www.cse.iitk.ac.in/users/dheeraj/cs425/lec05.html
Stephen Byron Cooper, Techwalla “Binary Countdown Protocol”,
https://www.techwalla.com/articles/binary-countdown-protocol
