Patent ID: 8625613

Claim:
A cable modem to set priority for signaling packets received from at least one Internet protocol (IP) phone and at least one customer premise equipment (CPE), the signaling packets comprising real-time transport protocol (RTP) packets and non real-time transport protocol (nRTP) packets, the cable modem comprising: telephone interfaces to connect to the at least one IP phone; local area network (LAN) interfaces to connect to the at least one CPE; a wide area network (WAN) interface to connect to the Internet; at least one processor; a storage system; and one or more programs that are stored in the storage system and are executed by the at least one processor to perform a method, the method comprising: receiving the signaling packets from the telephone interfaces and the LAN interfaces synchronously, wherein the signaling packets comprise the nRTP packets from the LAN interfaces over nRTP service flows, and the RTP packets from the telephone interfaces and the LAN interfaces over RTP service flows; presetting the signaling packets from the telephone interfaces as VoIP packets with a first priority and presetting the signaling packets from the LAN interfaces as LAN packets with a second priority, wherein the first priority is higher than the second priority; picking out RTP packets from the VoIP packets and the LAN packets; classifying the RTP packets as VoIP RTP packets and LAN RTP packets; determining whether all of the IP phones are on-hook, and updating the LAN RTP packets from the second priority to the first priority in response to all of the IP phones being on-hook; allocating bandwidths for the signaling packets according to the first priority and the second priority.