At&t Bell Laboratories

Lois E Flamm

John Ormond Limb

In order to control the transfer of packets of information among a plurality of stations, the instant communications system, station and protocol contemplate first and second oppositely directed signal paths. At least two stations are coupled to both the first and the second signal paths. A station reads one signal from a path and writes another signal on the path. The one signal is read by an arrangement which electrically precedes the arrangement for writing the other signal. Packets are transmitted in a regular, cyclic sequence. A head station on a forward path writes a start cycle code for enabling each station to transmit one or more packets. If a station has a packet to transmit, it can read the bus field of a packet on the forward path. Responsive thereto, a logical interpretation may be made as to whether the forward path is busy or is not busy. If the path is not busy, the packet may be written on the path by overwriting any signal thereon including the busy field. If the path is busy, the station may defer the writing until the path is detected as not busy. In order to accommodate different types of traffic, the head station may write different start cycle codes. For example, a start-of-voice code may enable stations to transmit voice packets; a start-of-data code may enable stations to transmit data packets, etc. for the different types of traffic. Further, the start cycle codes may be written in a regular, e.g., periodic, fashion to mitigate deleterious effects, such as speech clipping. Still further, the last station on the forward path may write end cycle codes in packets on a reverse path for communicating control information to the head station. Responsive to the control information, the head station may modify the cycle to permit the respective stations to, for example, transmit more than one packet per cycle or to vary the number of packet time slots, which are allocated to each of the different types of traffic.

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Lois E Flamm