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Module 2: Data Link Layer & MAC Sublayer

20222m

Which of the following is the multiple access protocol for channel access control?

(i) CSMA/CD
(ii) CSMA/CA
(iii) Both CSMA/CD and CSMA/CA
(iv) HDLC

Worked SolutionAI Assisted

(iii) Both CSMA/CD and CSMA/CA

Both are multiple access protocols in the "random access with carrier sense" family, used to control which station gets to use a shared channel at a given moment:

  • CSMA/CD (Collision Detection) — used in traditional (shared-medium) Ethernet; detects collisions after they occur and stops transmission early.
  • CSMA/CA (Collision Avoidance) — used in Wi-Fi (802.11); since wireless collisions are hard to detect, it proactively tries to avoid them (via random backoff and optional RTS/CTS handshaking).

HDLC (High-Level Data Link Control) is not a multiple access protocol at all — it's a bit-oriented, point-to-point/point-to-multipoint data link protocol for framing and reliable transfer, unrelated to shared-channel access control.

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