Priority Disciplines in a Loop System

A loop system with N buffered terminals sharing a common time-multiplexed channel is studied. The service discipline is prescribed by a permutation φ = (φ(1), ···, φ(N)) which gives the relative ranking of the terminals. Data from the ith terminal may be buffered at an intermediate terminal—its transmission to the CPU interrupted—if there is a conflict with data from a terminal with higher ranking. It is shown how such systems may be analyzed and how the system performance, as measured by average response time, may be improved by imposing a suitable priority discipline. © 1974, ACM. All rights reserved.