Data Communications Network with a Decentralized Communications Management

The invention relates to a data communications network with a plurality of network nodes, which in each case have one or more communications ports and an identifying node ID and are designed for decentrally managing connections and for transmitting data packets of a non-directional type and of a directional type, whereby the data packets contain header information at least concerning the packet type and node ID of the packet-generating network node. According to the invention, a special adjacent monitoring facility, a special broadcast functionality and/or a special connection set-up functionality are implemented in each fully implemented network node of the network in such a way that a self-organizing communications management is produced purely by means of decentralized, local measures, so that the network can be implemented as a distributed system which requires no central instances and thereby fulfills requirements concerning robustness, topology flexibility, expandability and scalability, identical component reusability, universality and real-time ability. The invention can be used, for example, for data communications networks in motor vehicles.