Patent ID: 8638821

Claim:
A communication network for providing media arbitration via a communications protocol using consecutive communication slots in the communication network, the communication network comprising: a plurality of communication nodes, each node arranged for communicating frames of data with the other nodes during a dynamic segment, the dynamic segment includes dynamic communication slots with respective communication slot numbers, wherein each of the plurality of communication nodes includes: a time base comprising consecutive timeslots, associated with the dynamic communication slots, each timeslot comprises a transmission action point, wherein transmission of each frame of data starts and ends at a transmission action point; a communication slot number controller, for adjusting a communication slot number if no communication is ongoing at the end of a time slot and to suspend adjusting the communication slot number if communication is ongoing at the end of a time slot; a minislot counter for counting minislots of the dynamic segment while the adjusting of the communication slot number counter is suspended; and the communication slot number controller to either continue the adjusting of the communication slot number if a determined duration of a reception of a frame is above a certain threshold or to continue adjusting of the communication slot number using a value obtained with the minislot counter if the determined duration of the reception of the frame is below a certain threshold, and wherein transmission is suppressed in dynamic slots that follow a dynamic slot in which the determined duration of the reception of the frame is below the certain threshold.