scope:

Scope and Purpose

This standard specifies the Media Access Control (MAC), the lower sublayer of the Data Link Layer (DLL), for the Fiber Distributed Data interface (FDDI). The FDDI provides a high-bandwidth (100 megabits per second (Mbits/s)), general-purpose interconnection among computers and peripheral equipment using fiber optics as the transmission medium in a ring configuration. The FDDI can be configured to support a sustained transfer rate of approximately 80 Mbits/s (10 megabytes per second (Mbytes/s)). The FDDI may not meet the response time requirements of all unbuffered high speed devices. The FDDI establishes the connection among many stations distributed over distances of several kilometers in extent. Default values for the FDDI were calculated to accommodate rings of up to 1000 physical connections and a total fiber path length of 200 kilometers