| 摘要 |
<p>A partial ARQ protocol for multicast and broadcast transmissions in network devices (12) operating in a shared medium access network (10). To support the partial ARQ, a media access control (MAC) protocol uses robustly transmitted frame delimiters (90) and MAC management frame information (182). In a multicast or broadcast frame (80) with partial ARQ, a destination address field (108) is set to that of a selected proxy device's address, and the address of the intended recipients (of group address of the intended recipients) is placed in a Multicast with Resonse entry 210H in the MAC management frame information (182). The frame (80) also contains a multicast flag (164) set to indicate that the transmission is intended for more than one device and a value in a delimiter type field (132) to indicate that a response is requested. Upon receipt of such a frame, the proxy device specified by the destination address field (108) provides an appropriate response type on behalf of the group. Then on-proxy recipients, detecting the multicast flag setting, know to ignore the DA in the destination address field (108) and instead look to the MAC management entry 210H for actual destination addresses.</p> |
