Token Ring

network communications architecture in which only the workstation which currently has the token may transmit data (token = continuous control message which is transmitted from station to station)

Token ring local area network (LAN) technology was conceived in the late 1960s by Olof Söderblom, then working for IBM [1]). US Patents were awarded in 1981 and Token-Ring was developed and promoted by IBM in the early 1980s and standardized as IEEE 802.5 by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. Initially very successful, it went into steep decline after the introduction of 10BASE-T for Ethernet and the EIA/TIA 568 cabling standard in the early 1990s. A fierce marketing effort led by IBM sought to claim better performance and reliability over Ethernet for critical applications due to its deterministic access method, but was no more successful than similar battles in the same era over their Micro Channel architecture. IBM no longer uses or promotes token ring.
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A computer local area network arbitration scheme in which conflicts in the transmission of messages are avoided by the granting of "tokens" which give permission to send. A station keeps the token while transmitting a message, if it has a message to transmit, and then passes it on to the next station.
Often, "Token Ring" is used to refer to the IEEE 802.5 token ring standard, which is the most common type of token ring.
Usenet newsgroup: news:comp.dcom.lans.token-ring.