A multiple-access protocol for local area networks is described. It is basically a hybrid of carrier-sense multiple access with collision detection (CSMA/CD) and the broadcast recognizing access method (BRAM). CSMA/CD, which is contention-based, works well under light traffic, but message collisions degrade system performance when the channel becomes heavily loaded. BRAM, which is collision-free, has no longer delays at low load, but its efficiency improves as the load increases. Performance models are developed for the hybrid protocol and for the Ethernet protocol, a proven commercial implementation of CSMA/CD-type protocols. It is found that the hybrid protocol gives better performance for a wide range of scenarios.>

The problem of optimizing joins between two fragmented relations on a broadcast local network is analyzed. Data redundancy is considered. Semantic information associated with fragments are used to eliminate necessary processing. More than one physical copies of a fragment is allowed to be used in a strategy to achieve more parallelism. Join-analysis graphs are introduced to represent joins on two fragmented relations. The problem of optimizing a join is mapped into an equivalent problem of finding a minimum-weight vertex cover for the corresponding join-analysis graph. This problem is proved to be NP-hard. A four-phase approach for processing joins is proposed.>