Importance

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Abstract

A plurality of transceivers frequently share a common communication medium or radio frequency channel. A broadcast channel can support only a limited number of transceivers. At some point, the shared channel will become so busy that additional transceivers will divide up more of an already inadequate bandwidth. To reduce the traffic, a broadcast channel is split into separate segments. A segment interface apparatus is used to couple two broadcast segments together. A hierarchical address is employed in the header of each packet transmitted on the medium. The segment interface apparatus compares fields in the header with that of internal registers to determine if the packet should be repeated on the other broadcast segment. An access level within the packet is decremented by the segment interface to control the number of times a packet is repeated.

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First Claim