What Is Token Ring?

Date First Published: 28th May 2022

Topic: Computer Networking

Subtopic: Network Setups

Article Type: Computer Terms & Definitions

Difficulty: Medium

Difficulty Level: 6/10

CONTENTS

Advantages and Disadvantages Of Token Ring
History

Learn more about what Token Ring in this article.

Token Ring is an earlier technology used in LANs where nodes are arranged in a ring or star topology and data is sent in one direction using a token. During communication, each node has to have the token to communicate. Nodes cannot send or receive data unless they have the token and if a node wants to communicate, it has to wait for its turn to catch the token. This causes the communication process to be delayed when nodes wait for a token. When the node can decode the token, it receives data.

Nodes are arranged in a circular or closed-loop way and unlike Ethernet, it is possible for Token Ring networks to be configured for certain nodes to have a higher priority than others and devices within a Token Ring network can have the same MAC address without causing issues.

Token Ring was standardised by the IEEE as IEEE 802.5 and was developed in the 1980s by IBM as an alternative to Ethernet. They were standardised between 4 and 16 Mb/s.

Note:

The token is the portion of data that is passed from one computer to another on Token Ring networks.

Advantages and Disadvantages Of Token Ring

The advantages of Token Ring are:

No data collisions can occur as only the token holder can send data. The number of available tokens is also controlled.
It performs better under large amounts of traffic than a bus topology.
It does not require a central network device, such as a router, hub, or switch to connect the nodes together.

The disadvantages of Token Ring are:

It is much slower than Ethernet as each node must wait for its turn to catch the token before it can send data.
It is not supported or developed by most manufacturers, making it difficult to find the equipment and resulting in increased costs. As of now, Ethernet is much more common.
It had network management issues and poor tolerance for network faults.

History

Token Ring was used by the Attached Resource Computer Network, token bus, and Fibre Distributed Data Interface. However, the most widely used Token Ring protocols were ones released by IBM in the mid-1980s. In the late 1980s, the standardised version of it appeared as IEEE 802.5.

Token Ring became popular due to its suitability for handling large amounts of traffic. However, they were unsuitable for large networks that were widely spread or had physically remote nodes. In addition, the cabling for Token Ring costs more than Cat 3 and Cat 5 cables that are used for Ethernet and the network cards and ports were much more expensive.

In the 1990s, the use of Token Ring and 802.5 greatly declined. IEEE 802.5 is now listed as inactive and they are rarely used now and are considered obsolete. Ethernet became more popular and organisations phased out Token Ring.