Patent ID: 8711741

Claim:
A communication system to establish a network among peripheral devices on a shared wired communication medium, the communication system comprising: at least three multi-tone modulated moderns each configured to couple an associated peripheral device to the shared wired communication medium; and respective discrete and exclusive point-to-point communication links between pairs of the at least three multi-tone modulated modems using the shared wired communication medium, wherein each of the at least three multi-tone modulated moderns includes: shared and discrete components coupled to one another to form a transmit path and a receive path configured for multi-tone modulation and demodulation of communications on the shared wired communication medium, including: a network module configured to communicate over the shared wired communication medium with network modules of remaining ones of the at least three multi-tone modulated modems to allocate respective dedicated frequency ranges each comprising one or more tones on the shared wired communications medium for establishing each of the discrete and exclusive point-to-point communication links between corresponding pairs of the at least three multi-tone modulated modems by which each multi-tone modulated modem and associated peripheral device communicates directly and simultaneously with each remaining one of the at least three multi-tone modulated modems on the shared wired communication medium.