CSMA/CD — Physics Simulation

How It Works

Carrier Sense Multiple Access with Collision Detection (CSMA/CD) is the contention-based media access control protocol foundational to legacy shared Ethernet (IEEE 802.3). Before transmitting, a station senses the shared medium (Carrier Sense); if idle, transmission begins. If two stations transmit concurrently, their signals collide on the bus (Collision Detection), prompting both to abort immediately, broadcast a 32-bit jamming sequence, and wait an exponentially increasing random backoff delay before reattempting.

Governing Equation

T_{slot} = 2 · τ_{prop} | t_{backoff} = r · T_{slot}, r ∈ [0, 2^k - 1] | L_{min} ≥ 2 · R · τ_{prop}