The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Jul. 29, 2008
Filed:
Apr. 04, 2001
Tracy D. Mallory, Palo Alto, CA (US);
Tracy D. Mallory, Palo Alto, CA (US);
Broadcom Corporation, Irvine, CA (US);
Abstract
A method of sharing information among a plurality of stations on a communications network, each of the stations being capable of transmitting and receiving frames over the communications network. A group of agreed-upon flags is established, periodic timing is provided in each station that expires after an interval, and a common frame format is defined providing the capability of specifying a current transmit flag set, an old transmit flag set, and a current receive flag set. Each station maintains: a current transmit state set a recent and previous timer expiration set and a current and previous transmit received set. A control frame is generated and transmitted by a transmitting station to all other stations on the communications network each time a flag in a logical union of current transmit flag sets is set and upon the expiration of the timer in the transmitting station.