Patent ID: 7623532

Claim:
A fiber node in a hybrid fiber-coax network (HFCN) located between an upstream facility and a plurality of cable modems, comprising: a cable modem termination system (CMTS) comprising: a transmitter to transmit data to the cable modems as downstream analog radio frequency (RF) signals over a plurality of downstream channels, a receiver to receive upstream analog RF signals from the cable modems over a plurality of upstream channels and extract data from the upstream analog RF signals, and a processor, connected to the transmitter and the receiver, to: provide the data to the transmitter, receive the extracted data from the receiver and send the extracted data to the upstream facility, dynamically allocate a downstream channel of the plurality of downstream channels to a downstream network path for transmitting the data or an upstream channel of the plurality of upstream channels to an upstream network path for receiving the data by compressing, merging, and packet transmitting data over the downstream network path or the upstream network path, isolate multiple ones of the upstream channels, less than all of the upstream channels, and combine the extracted data from the isolated upstream channels for digital transmission to the upstream facility, where at least one of the isolated upstream channels is unrelated in function or frequency to at least one other isolated upstream channel.