This thesis proposes a new media access protocol for local area and metropolitan area all-optical networks employing wavelength division multiplexing (WDM). Through WDM, multiple channels are created on a single fiber, and an aggregate network bandwidth far greater than the peak electronic processing speed can be realized. The new protocol, Dynamic Media Access Control Scheme (DMACS), is based on the Dynamic Interleaved Slotted Aloha (DISA) protocol. It improves on DISA by adding a common control channel that provides reservations for constant bit-rate traffic, acknowledgments, and global flow control. DMACS supports connection setup and tear down, different traffic classes, flow control, and packet resequencing in an attempt to integrate features of the transport layer directly into the media access control layer. The performance of the DMACS protocol has been evaluated through analytical methods and simulation. It was found to be superior to the DISA protocol and to provide good performance that is relatively insensitive to the number of stations and the traffic conditions in the network. / Master of Science