Fiber Distributed Data Interface

Fiber Distributed Data Interface (FDDI) provides a 100 Mbit/s optical standard for data transmission in a local area network that can extend in range up to 200 kilometers (124 miles). Although FDDI logical topology is a ring-based token network, it does not use the IEEE 802.5 token ring protocol as its basis; instead, its protocol is derived from the IEEE 802.4 token bus timed token protocol. In addition to covering large geographical areas, FDDI local area networks can support thousands of users. As a standard underlying medium it uses optical fiber, although it can use copper cable, in which case it may be referred to as CDDI (Copper Distributed Data Interface). FDDI offers both a Dual-Attached Station (DAS), counter-rotating token ring topology and a Single-Attached Station (SAS), token bus passing ring topology.

FDDI was considered an attractive campus backbone technology in the early to mid 1990s since existing Ethernet networks only offered 10 Mbit/s transfer speeds and Token Ring networks only offered 4 Mbit/s or 16 Mbit/s speeds. Thus it was the preferred choice of that era for a high-speed backbone, but FDDI has since been effectively obsolesced by fast Ethernet which offered the same 100 Mbit/s speeds, but at a much lower cost and, since 1998, by Gigabit Ethernet due to its speed, and even lower cost, and ubiquity.

FDDI, as a product of American National Standards Institute X3T9.5 (now X3T12), conforms to the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) model of functional layering of LANs using other protocols. FDDI-II, a version of FDDI, adds the capability to add circuit-switched service to the network so that it can also handle voice and video signals. Work has started to connect FDDI networks to the developing Synchronous Optical Network SONET.

A FDDI network contains two rings, one as a secondary backup in case the primary ring fails. The primary ring offers up to 100 Mbit/s capacity. When a network has no requirement for the secondary ring to do backup, it can also carry data, extending capacity to 200 Mbit/s. The single ring can extend the maximum distance; a dual ring can extend 100 km (62 miles). FDDI has a larger maximum-frame size (4,352 bytes) than standard 100 Mbit/s Ethernet which only supports a maximum-frame size of 1,500 bytes, allowing better throughput.

Designers normally construct FDDI rings in the form of a "dual ring of trees" (see network topology). A small number of devices (typically infrastructure devices such as routers and concentrators rather than host computers) connect to both rings - hence the term "dual-attached". Host computers then connect as single-attached devices to the routers or concentrators. The dual ring in its most degenerate form simply collapses into a single device. Typically, a computer-room contains the whole dual ring, although some implementations have deployed FDDI as a Metropolitan area network.

July 18, 2011

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