Patent ID: 8638667

Claim:
A method, comprising: determining a trigger for establishing transmission priority on a path through a shared-media communication network for priority traffic to a particular node, wherein the trigger is determined to have occurred when a particular data flow has been received at a root node; in response to determining that the trigger has occurred at the root node, generating a path clear message (PCM), the PCM sent to each node along the path to instruct nodes each node along the path to suspend transmission for traffic other than the priority traffic for a specified duration, and also to transmit a local non-repeated distributed message to one or more neighbor nodes of each respective node along the path, the local non-repeated distributed message to instruct the neighbor nodes to suspend transmission for the specified duration; transmitting a transmission priority clearing message along the path in response to completion of the transmission priority, the transmission priority clearing message to instruct the each node along the path to resume transmission for other traffic and also to transmit a second local non-repeated distributed message to the neighbor nodes of each respective node along the path, the second local non-repeated distributed message to instruct the neighbor nodes to resume transmission; transmitting the PCM along the path to the particular node to establish the transmission priority for the priority traffic along the path through the shared-media network; and transmitting the priority traffic to the particular node along the path during the transmission priority.