Patent ID: 7293103

Claim:
A method for providing access to a communications medium, the communications medium being suitable for allowing use of a plurality of Home Phoneline Network Association (HPNA) v2 frames, the method comprising steps of: transmitting a plurality of messages between a first enhanced station (STA) and a second enhanced STA, each enhanced STA being one of a Media Control Station (MC STA) and a non-MC STA, each enhanced STA provided preferential access, with respect to non-enhanced devices compliant with said HPNA, to a Home Networking communications medium by said MC STA, each transmitted message being transmitted in an enhanced frame, each enhanced frame having timing to allow an Inter-Frame Gap (IFG); and masking the IFG to a non-enhanced STA via a blocking signal transmitted during at least one IFG between enhanced frames, the IFG not masked to the second enhanced STA.