FDDI

FDDI is an acronym for Fiber Distributed Data Interface. FDDI perform the same functions as the CDDI, that is, it sends the digital data over the fiber optic cable. The FDDI works on a set of ANSI protocols, upon which the data is sent over these fiber optic cables to the destination. As compared to the CDDI, FDDI is capable of transferring the data over long distances as well. The FDDI networks that are present in the market are basically token passing network and they are capable of supporting the data transmission speed up to 100 Mbps, which is relatively lower than the CDDI, however, still is fast enough to complete the task in short amount of time. The FDDI network due to its property is usually used as the backbone for the wide-area networks.

Apart from serving in the backbone area for the wide area network, it is the optical standard for the data transmission in local area network which can be ranged up to the maximum of 200 kilometers. The topology of the FDDI is the ring based token network topology. Unlike the CDDI the FDDI makes use of the protocol which is derived from the 802.4 token bus timed protocol, while in the CDDI the protocol is derived from the 802.5 token ring protocol.

Another important feature of FDDI is that it can support up to thousands of users connecting to it at one given time unlike the CDDI, where there can only be a maximum of 255 computers that can be connected to the CDDI. There are two types of station offered by the FDDI technology; they are the Dual Attached Station or DAS and SAS or Single Attached Station. The DAS works on the counter rotating ring topology and SAS work on the token bus passing ring topology.