A class of methods for sharing a data transmission medium in which hosts transmIT as soon as they have data to send and then check to see whether their transmission has suffered a collision wITh another host' s. If a collision is detected then the data must be resent. The resending algorIThm should try to minimise the chance that two hosts' s data will repeatedly collide. For example, the CSMA/CD protocol used on Ethernet specifies that they should then waIT for a random time before re-transmITting. See also backoff. This contrasts wITh slotted protocols and token passing. (1997-03-18)