What you described is known as a "Token Bus". The one developed by General Motors became an IEEE standard (802.4) for a while as an alternative to Ethernet (802

What you described is known as a "Token Bus". The one developed by General Motors became an IEEE standard (802.4) for a while as an alternative to Ethernet (802.3) and the Token Ring (802.5) but was quickly forgotten. A more popular token bus was the Arcnet. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARCNET https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARCNET While IBM's Token Ring was the most famous one there were others: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambridge_Ring_(computer_network) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambridge_Ring_(computer_netwo... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiber_Distributed_Data_Interface https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiber_Distributed_Data_Interfa... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scalable_Coherent_Interface https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scalable_Coherent_Interface