Patent ID: 7912078

Claim:
A method for controlling data flow from a channel service module (CSM) in an asymmetric channel environment, the method comprising: a CSM providing data for transmission to a plurality of physical (PHY) layer device channel buffers; a CSM transmit interface determining a traffic pattern of data flowing from the CSM to each PHY channel buffer, including: a first-in first-out (FIFO) threshold, which is the maximum amount of data that can be accepted at the PHY channel buffer; pending data in the CSM transmit interface, which is the amount of data already sent from the CSM and received in the CSM transmit interface, but not yet transmitted to the PHY channel buffer; and, CSM burst size, which is the amount of data sent to the CSM transmit interface from the CSM in response to an Xon command; and, for each PHY channel buffer, if (FIFO threshold—pending data)<CSM burst size, then sending an Xon command to the CSM requesting more data.