One faction wanted to keep carrier-sense multiple access with collision detection (CSMA/CD) in order to keep it pure Ethernet, even though the collision domain problem limited the distances to one tenth that of 10BASE-T. Another faction wanted to change to a polling architecture from the hub (they called it "Demand Priority Protocol") in order to maintain the 10BASE-T distances, and also to make it a deterministic protocol.
The design goals were to avoid the radio frequency radiation emitted at the higher frequencies required by Fast Ethernet and to leverage existing wiring installations of Category 3 cabling that most organizations had recently installed to support 10 megabit twisted-pair Ethernet.
This had the additional advantage of being less susceptible to external sources of RF interference such as other network cables, fluorescent lights, and high power lines.
Real-life load testing showed 100VG-AnyLAN reaching 95% of its theoretical network speed instead of about 45% as in Fast Ethernet when using hubs.
Fast Ethernet switches were not commonplace at first because of high cost and limited availability so, initially, 100VG had a significant performance advantage.
By letting the hub manage access, the architecture can guarantee required bandwidth and requested service priority to particular applications or nodes.