METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR CONTROLLING LATENCY AND JITTER IN A LAN USING A CSMA/CD PROTOCOL

摘要

An Ethernet network or other CSMA/CD network includes hub adaptors that are modified to provide a known bounded low maximum access latency. The modified adaptors maintain a state variable whose values indicates whether the last operation by the adaptor was a transmit or a receive. In the case where the last operation was a receive, the adaptor transmits a packet with a minimum or zero backoff and as an option with a reduced interpacket gap. In the case where the last operation was a transmit, the adaptor waits before transmitting a packet a period of time that allows the other node on the channel to transmit a packet if the other node has a packet to transmit.