Simple peer to peer network?

[Sean Conner]

It was thus said that the Great Jim Brain once stated:
> Sean Conner wrote:
> >  Each computer has two serial connections.  Can you send and receive on a
> >single "port" at the same time?  Can you send and receive on both "ports" 
> >at
> >the same time?  The design of the protocol depends somewhat upon the
> >  
> The sync ports are unidirectional, but they can be run together, so an 
> SPI-like bus could be created.
> >capabilities of the ports.  If you can't, then you might want something 
> >like
> >token ring, where a "transmit" token is passed around, and any computer 
> >with
> >the "token" can transmit.  If you can send/receive without problems on
> >either port, then just let the computers transmit at will.
> >  
> On the latter, I don't understand.  Who would they transmit to?  How 
> would I deal with collisions?

  Since each computer is connected to two others, you end up with a ring
configuration (small example here):

	A -- B -- C -- D
	|	       |
	E 	       L
	|	       |
	F              K
	|              |
	G -- H -- I -- J

  What I meant was that if A could transmit and receive from B and E at the
same time, then no tokens (more on that in a bit) are needed.  Say, A wants
to talk to D; to do so, it needs to send a packet to B, which will then
forward it to C, which will forward it to D.  Since the links are
bidirectional (in this hypothetical situation) A can talk to B or E at any
time.

  If the links are unidirectional, then there has to be some way for A to
signal B that it has a packet to send its way---that is, if B isn't already
sending a packet to A.  But first, you need to solve this situation:

	A -- B

(a very simple network).  A and B want to send each other a packet, at the
same time.  How is this resolved?  How you resolve this dictates the final
format of your protocol.

> >  About the only real problem to come up is configuration---how does each
> >computer get its address on the network?  Manual configuration?  
> >Automatic?  
> I cna hard code the addresses, but how does the ring/bus know when a 
> machine is alive, etc.

  Well, how does A know that its neighbor B is up?  Just how many wires go
between A and B?  

  -spc (From the sound of it, it sounds like the answer is "one" ... )