Patent ID: 9628828
Date: 2017-04-18
CPC Classifications: H04N

Claim:
1. A cable television system, comprising: a cable modem termination system (CMTS) operable to deliver content and data services to a plurality of subscribers of the cable television system; a plurality of network elements operable to deliver the content to the CMTS; and a software defined network (SDN) controller operable within a cloud computing environment that is communicatively coupled to the CMTS, wherein the SDN controller is operable to virtualize the network elements in the cloud computing environment to balance data traffic through the virtualized network elements, wherein the SDN controller is further operable to process a request for content from a user equipment (UE), to determine a bandwidth capability to the UE, to determine that bandwidth of the requested content exceeds the bandwidth capability to the UE, to analyze the bandwidth capacity of the network elements, to generate a virtual channel through the network elements based on the bandwidth capacity of the network elements, and to deliver the content to the UE through the virtualized channel.