Patent ID: 7388853

Claim:
A method for providing dynamic adjustment of frame encoding parameters to improve transmission performance for a transmitting frame being transmitted from a transmitting station to a receiving station over a transmission medium on a frame-based communications network, the transmitting frame having a header segment and a payload segment, the header segment being transmitted using a fixed set of encoding parameters, the payload segment being transmitted using a variable set of payload encoding parameters, the method comprising: the transmitting station sending the transmitting frame using the fixed set of header encoding parameters and one set of the variable set of payload encoding parameters a time; the receiving station: receiving and decoding the header segment of each transmitting frame, performing a decode process on the payload segment of each transmitting frame, and either decoding the payload segment without errors wherein the frame is considered successfully received, or detecting an error occurrence in the decode process, measuring and tracking the performance of the frame decode process, determining network performance characteristics for establishing desired performance based upon measuring and tracking the performance of the frame decode process, and indicating to the transmitting station changes to the payload encoding parameters based upon determining network performance improvement characteristics; and the transmitting station changing the one set of the variable set of payload encoding parameters corresponding to the changes to the payload encoding parameters indicated to the transmitting station for encoding next future transmitting frames.