The token protocols in FDDI and FDDI-M support synchronous and asynchronous traffic. However, FDDI suffers from a token-lateness problem, and FDDI-M may starve asynchronous traffic. To remove these two weaknesses, we propose the timely-token protocol. The main feature of this protocol is the addition of information to the token so that each station may determine the reason of an early token arrival. Using this information, each station limits its asynchronous transmission to ensure that the token is not late at subsequent stations. In addition, we present a synchronous allocation scheme for this protocol. Finally, a comparison is made against FDDI and FDDI-M.