Abstract: An apparatus and method to implement a hybrid contention and polling protocol for a communications or computer network is disclosed. Various apparatus and method embodiments of the invention employ specific polls from a primary station for polling identified secondary stations of the network which may be in an active state, general polls 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 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 apparatus disclosed may also be used to apply various polling parameters to optimize network performance.

Abstract: A control station (8) is coupled to a plurality of tributary devices (20, 16, 18) by way of at least one high speed broadcast downstream data channel and more than one shared lower speed upstream data channels. The control station (8) broadcasts data to all the tributary devices (20, 16, 18) and selects a channel for a specific tributary device (20, 16, 18) to respond to a poll. After polling, the tributary device (20, 16, 18) changes the tributary device transmitter (42) to the frequency of the selected channel. The tributary device (20, 16, 18) either sends data to send to the control station (8) or sends a negative acknowledge to the control station (8). If a negative acknowledgment was transmitted, the control station (8) notifies the control station transmitter that the channel is idle.

Abstract: An apparatus and method to implement a hybrid contention and polling protocol for a communications or computer network is disclosed.

Abstract: The system and method provide for efficiently resolving collisions in an environment where a transmitting device cannot hear collisions without a headend control station/control device, i.e., master, repeating transmission of all upstream frames in the downstream direction. This invention also prevents additional collisions from occurring between a device that is retransmitting and a device that is transmitting a packet for the first time. Further, the present invention allows continued utilization of a channel by other devices while contending devices are processing collision resolution procedures.

Abstract: A method and system provide efficient resolution of transmission collisions in a simultaneous channel access communication environment. At least a first Master device and a plurality of Slave devices utilize the steps of: (1) transmitting, by the plurality of Slave devices upon receiving a contention poll from the first Master device, information to the Master device, wherein transmissions of the Slave devices provide a collision; (2) selecting a subset of Slaves allowed to retransmit following the collision, by the first Master device using a collision resolution poll in accordance with a predetermined depth first tree search technique; and (3) retransmitting, by the subset of Slave devices, the information to the Master device, and, where another collision is obtained, recycling to step 2 and repeating steps 2 and 3 until all collisions are resolved.

Abstract: A method for providing access by secondary stations (12, 14, 16) to a shared transmission medium, maintains a list of secondary stations (12, 14, 16). A poll is transmitted poll by a primary station (10) to one of the secondary stations (12, 14, 16). The secondary station (12, 14, 16) waits for a poll, examines the transmission allocation, determines if there is congestion and transmits, along with the data in response to the poll, information regarding congestion. A system for providing such access includes a primary station (10) and a plurality of secondary stations (12, 14, 16). The primary station includes a polling controller (30), a receiver (32), a transmitter (34), a summer (36), a secondary station poll list database (38) and a data traffic controller (40).

Abstract: An efficient distributed queueing random access method and network system provide, in the medium access control layer in networks with broadcast channels, for conserving reservation bandwidth and concomitantly providing immediate transmission access, wherein, prior to receiving a first time slot, a plurality of reservation slot parameters are initialized by a user.