Before effective Ethernet switching existed, some network designers used an alternative bus collision avoidance protocol known as the token bus protocol. With the token bus protocol, a ''token'' made up of a short, standard string of 1s and 0s was circulated constantly in a round robin fashion among the Network Interface Units (NIUs) attached to the bus. NIUs did not hold the token; they simply passed it without delay to the next NIU in the chain. An NIU was only allowed to place a message on the bus when it possessed the token. After the message was delivered, the token was again put into circulation. No NIU was allowed to use the token again until the token had circulated to every other NIU at least once.
(a) Under what conditions would this protocol perform more satisfactorily than CSMA/CD? Explain.