Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd.

Toshio Oga

Yuji Mizuguchi

Toshihiko Kurosaki

Toshihisa Ikeda

Takahisa Sakai

Kenichi Moriguchi

A master station,produces a token packet for isochronous data in which a slave station,and slave stations,and,serving as a sending station and receiving stations are designated using IDs for isochronous data &ldquo;&num;,&rdquo; and &ldquo;&num;,&rdquo; in accordance with contents described in a table,held in its inner part so as to manage a transmission bandwidth using a token packet sending/analysis executing device,and sends out the produced token packet to a transition path,on the downstream side. The slave station,sends out an isochronous data packet,using the token packet for isochronous data,According to the token packet for isochronous data,the slave stations,and,are designated as receiving stations using the ID for isochronous data &ldquo;&num;,&rdquo;, so that the slave stations,and,perform the above-mentioned operations, to receive the isochronous data packet,The sending station can thus transmit the same isochronous data to a plurality of receiving stations belonging to a broadcast group, so that it is possible to establish multicast communication (communication to a plurality of nodes).

Communication network

A master station including at least a token packet (Iso) management table in which the overall band of the bus is partitioned into certain bands, rewrites the token packet (Iso) management table according to the bandwidth required in Isochronous data transmission between stations to at least control transmission of token packets (Iso) and dynamically control the bandwidth.

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Neyagawa, Japan

Toshio Oga