Patent ID: 7701951
Filing Date: 2010-04-20
Classification: H04L

Abstract:
1. A system, comprising: a gateway operating between a packet switched cable network and an access network, the gateway comprising: a processor to receive content for transporting using Data Over Cable System Interface Specification (DOCSIS) framing, over the packet switched cable network, and to an edge modulation device for remote modulation by the edge modulation device and downstream transmission from the edge modulation device; the processor configured to identify a first packet switched bandwidth amount for communicating the content from the gateway, over the packet switched cable network, to the edge modulation device, the processor further configured to identify a second Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (QAM) bandwidth amount for communicating the content from the edge modulation device, over a Radio Frequency (RF) channel, to a cable modem; the processor configured to filter available gateway ports according to the first packet switched bandwidth amount; the processor configured to identify Virtual Local Area Network (VLAN) tags corresponding to the filtered available gateway ports; and the processor configured to communicate the second QAM bandwidth amount and the VLAN tags over the packet switched cable network and to the edge modulation device; wherein the edge modulation device of the system is configured to: identify a subset of ports on the edge modulation device associated with the VLAN tags, each of the identified edge modulation device ports associated with a QAM channel; filter the identified subset of ports by comparing the second QAM bandwidth amount to availability of the associated QAM channels; select an edge modulation device port from the identified subset of ports according to said filtering; and send back a message to the gateway identifying a tag that corresponds to the selected edge modulation device port; wherein the gateway ports are associated with a VLAN and the processor sends a list of the VLAN tags to the edge modulation device and then receives back a selected one of the VLAN tags.