Abstract
This paper presents an approximate analytical model to estimate the mean packet walting times at the stations in the IEEE 802, 6 subnetwork of a metropolitan area network. Each station is modeled as a two queue single server system, which serves data packets and requests from downstream stations according to the DQDB protocol. The model estimates the mean waiting time of the requests and in turn, using the discrete time work conservation law, estimates the mean waiting time for packets. Simulation experiments shows that the model accurately works even under very high traffic loads.