Patent ID: 7130927

Claim:
A method of bandwidth management for ensuring a guaranteed bandwidth to each station of a transmission network having a plurality of stations, the method comprising: circulating a token frame from station to station along a logical ring formed from a plurality of stations where one station is the ring manager, and allowing each station to transmit data to other stations over said transmission network while holding said token; and allocating a credit of data bytes, said credit of data bytes specifying the number of data bytes that are allowed to be transmitted by a station upon reception of said token frame when a Utilization Rate based upon the number of data bytes sent by all stations since the preceding reception of said token frame is greater than a predetermined threshold, wherein said Utilization Rate is computed as follows: Utilization Rate=Utilization/Maximum Bandwidth, wherein Utilization=Byte Counter*8 /TRTT, wherein Maximum Bandwidth is a value that is a percentage of the logical ring capacity and TRTT is the round trip time for the token frame to circulate around said logical ring; and transmitting data from each station holding said token in response to the allocation of credits.