Medium access control (MAC) protocol for single bus multimedia fair access local area network

摘要

A method provides for data transmission utilizing medium access control protocol with a fair cell-access scheme in a local area network having a unidirectional looped bus and a plurality of network stations coupled to the bus for asynchronous cell transmissions from one network station to other network stations. A head-of-bus is used to generate continuously time slots to the bus. Each of the time slots includes a busy bit, a reserved bit, and a slot reservation bit. The medium access control protocol makes use of the busy bit, the reserved bit, and the slot reservation bit so as to provide fair bandwidth sharing by all of the network stations connected to the bus.