Patent ID: 7602707

Claim:
A computer storage medium encoded with computer-readable instructions being executed by a computer processor for providing a differentiated quality of service (QoS) in a real time slotted network comprising: storing a transmission failure probability for a transmission over the time slotted network, wherein the transmission failure probability comprises a ratio of failed transmissions to attempted transmissions; determining a contention window target value as a function of the transmission failure probability; and altering stepwise a contention window according to a scaling function of the contention window target value, the scaling according to the QoS for the transmission, wherein the stepwise alteration of the contention window is determined according to: Δ ⁢ ⁢ CW = CW targ - CW cur CW cur ⁢ S , Δ ⁢ ⁢ CW representing an amount by which to change a prior contention window, CW targ representing the contention window target value, CW cur representing the prior contention window, and S representing the scaling function, wherein the stepwise alteration repeats.