CSMA/CA

This interactive animation shows how medium access works in a CSMA/CA implementation.

All stations can communicate with a central access point. You can choose whether the stations can hear each other.
You can click on the button at a station to emit a frame.

When the simulation is paused, the meaning of the color at your cursor's position will be displayed.

configuration

Starts or pauses the animation (you can also start or pause by clicking into the animation)

method

This setting will change the connections among the stations.
(changing will reset animation)
Without hidden terminal all stations hear each other and the access point.
With the hidden terminal enabled, only the access point is connected to all stations, but none of them can hear an other station.
  emit frame queue backoff
0 0
0 0
0 0
access point  
   

legend

frame type

 
 no frame
 
 RTS
 
 CTS
 
 data frame
 
 ACK

carrier sensing

 
 channel free
 
 channel busy
 
 channel considered busy

countdown

 
 countdown