A class of methods for sharing a data transmission medium in which hosts transmit assoon as they have data to send and then check to see whether their transmission hassuffered 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 Ethernetspecifies 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)