CSMA/CD (Carrier Sense Multiple Access / Collision Detection) is a type of contention protocol. Networks using the CSMA/CD procedure are simple to implement but do not have deterministic transmission characteristics. The CSMA/CD method is internationally standardized in IEEE 802.3 and ISO 8802.3.
CSMA/CA (Carrier Sense Multiple Access / Collision Avoidance), a network contention protocol that listens to a network in order to avoid collisions, unlike CSMA/CD that deals with network transmissions once collisions have been detected. CSMA/CA contributes to network traffic because, before any real data is transmitted, it has to broadcast a signal onto the network in order to listen for collision scenarios and to tell other devices not to broadcast.
