SYSTEM FOR DETERMINING THE FREQUENCY OF REPETITIONS OF POLLING ACTIVE STATIONS RELATIVE TO THE POLLING OF INACTIVE STATIONS

摘要

An apparatus and method to implement a hybrid contention and polling protoco l for a communications or computer network is disclosed. Various apparatus and method embodiments of the invention employ specific polls (116) from a prima ry station for polling identified secondary stations of the network which may b e in an active state, general polls (124, 304) to any of a plurality of secondary stations of the network which may be in an unresponsive state to initiate contention access to the network, and general polls for collision resolution (318) in the event that a plurality of secondary stations may simultaneously contend for network access. Various embodiments may also include frequency channel allocation for transmission and reception of data and other information within the network. The various procedures and apparat us disclosed may also be used to apply various polling parameters to optimize network performance.