International Business Machines Corporation

Roy C Dixon

Werner K Bux

Ernst H Rothauser

In a network of communication rings (R1 . . . R7, BB) interconnected by bridges (B1 . . . B4), access to each ring is regulated by a circulating token which is normally issued at irregular intervals depending on occurrence and length of messages. To enable communication of messages which have to be transmitted synchronously, i.e., at regular intervals, each ring has a synchronous bandwidth manager SBM which periodically issues a token for only synchronous information. Each SBM is located in a bridge node (13, 15) but only one of them which is located in a particular bridge node (15) is the master SBM from which all other SBM's are synchronized, using a synchronous token and/or special synchronization circuitry in each bridge. This allows a common period in the whole network for handling synchronous information, even if all rings have different bit rates.

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Roy C Dixon