Ring networks made of fiber-ribbon point-to-point links are proposed. The first network is a control-channel based network in which one fiber in each link joins with others to form a control-channel ring. This ring improves performance of the network by sending medium access control information immediately before the data transmissions. High throughputs can be achieved in the network due to pipelining, i.e., several packets can travel through the network simultaneously but in different segments of the ring. The network can meet tough performance demands in, e.g., massively parallel signal processing systems, which is shown by example. Also, real-time demands can be met using slot reserving. The network, called CC-FPR (control-channel based fiber-ribbon pipeline ring), can be built today using off-the-shelf fiber optic components. The increasingly good price/performance ratio for fiber-ribbon links indicates a high potential for the success of the proposed kind of networks; a prototype is currently under development. The second network is similar to first except that it divides the network into two subnetworks, one for packet-switched traffic and one for circuit-switched traffic. When the main data flow in the network does not change rapidly, this is a good choice for a simple but powerful network.
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