PERFORMANCE EVALUATION OF INFORMATION MANAGEMENT SYSTEM USING ANALYTICAL MODEL

Abstract

In a very large information system like a University or a vast industrial organisation, there exists a number of departments dealing with various aspects of management and planning, inventory control etc. There will be a continuous exchange of information between these departments for better coordination and control. Local area networks, by nature, are ideally suited to meet such requirements. To design a network to suit a particular environment , choice of correct network topology and the access technique is important. A system designer's problem will be to decide what price, or a combination of prices is appropriate to pay for his particular environment. The most appropriate performance mea- sures for access techniques are the throughput delay character-istics. The model considered here pertains to a University campus having .51 different departments (allowing for future expansion). The maximum distance between any two departments is taken as 2.5 km. The first phase of the dissertation is to propose the suitable medium access technique for the network model. This is achieved by carrying out simulation considering analytical model. For this purpose, the performances of three medium . it . access protocols that are recommended by IEEE 802 committee namely token bus, token ring and CSMA/CD have been considered After selecting the suitable access technique for the network model considered an attempt is made to study the feasibility of the technique chosen. In this phase, the effec, of various network parameters on the performance is analysed through simulation. Local Network is such a vast subject that it is neither possible to design a simulation model to cover every situatioi nor design all the parameters of a particular technique. The endeavour has been to get a complete overview of local net-working rather than concentrate on one small part of it. It may evolve new techniques or simplify the existing ones, but the underlying principles brought out in this study will re- main the same. `