Patent ID: 6965942

Claim:
In a communication network including a plurality of stations, a method of accessing said network for a first station, from said plurality of stations, comprising the steps of: periodically monitoring a load of traffic over said communication network; measuring said load of traffic over said communication network, wherein said measuring said load of traffic includes calculating a collision rate over a specific period of time, wherein said calculating a collision rate further comprises: determining a number of transmissions over said network; determining a number of virtual carrier sense collisions over said network; determining a number of physical carrier sense collisions over said communication network; determining a total number of collisions by adding said number of virtual carrier sense collisions to said number of physical carrier sense collisions together; and calculating said collision rate by dividing said total number of collisions by the sum of said number of transmissions and said total number of collisions; and dynamically setting a minimum contention window (CW) value of a contention window according to said load of traffic over said communication network.