Token Bus (IEEE 802.4)

Token Bus (IEEE 802.4) is a popular standard for token passing LANs. In a token bus LAN, the physical media is a bus or a tree, and a logical ring is created using coaxial cable. The token is passed from one user to another in a sequence (clockwise or anticlockwise). Each station knows the address of the station to its “left” and “right” as per the sequence in the logical ring. A station can only transmit data when it has the token. The working of a token bus is somewhat similar to Token Ring. 

The above diagram shows a logical ring formed in a bus-based token-passing LAN. The logical ring is shown with the arrows. 

Frame Format: 
The various fields of the frame format are: 

1. Preamble – It is used for bit synchronization. It is 1-byte field. 
    
2. Start Delimiter – These bits mark the beginning of the frame. It is 1-byte field. 
    
3. Frame Control – This field specifies the type of frame – data frame and control frames. It is 1-byte field. 
    
4. Destination Address – This field contains the destination address. It is a 2 to 6 bytes field. 
    
5. Source Address – This field contains the source address. It is a 2 to 6 bytes field. 
    
6. Data – If 2-byte addresses are used then the field may be up to 8182 bytes and 8174 bytes in case of 6-byte addresses. 
    
7. Checksum – This field contains the checksum bits which are used to detect errors in the transmitted data. It is 4 bytes field. 
    
8. End Delimiter – This field marks the end of a frame. It is 1-byte field.

Reference :
Book – Computer Networks by Tanenbaum