Patent ID: 8526425

Claim:
A home gateway that electronically connects a plurality of customer premise equipments (CPEs) to the Internet via a cable modem termination system (CMTS) connecting to a plurality of other home gateways, the home gateway comprising: at least one processor; a storage system; a plurality of tuners operable to modulate working frequencies of the home gateway to establish communication between the plurality of CPEs and the Internet; and one or more programs that are stored in the memory and are executed by the at least one processor, the one or more programs comprising: a distributing module operable to distribute the plurality of tuners to the plurality of CPEs according to request packets sent by the plurality of CPEs; a transmitting module operable to transmit broadcast packets to the other home gateways to inquire whether one of the other home gateways has an unoccupied tuner or not upon the condition that there are no unoccupied tuners of the home gateway, to receive response packets from the one of the other home gateways having the unoccupied tuner, to modulate a special working frequency to receive data from the Internet via the unoccupied tuner, and to transmit the data to the CPE that has not distributed the tuner; and wherein the broadcast packet comprises the special working frequency asked by one of the CPEs, and the response packet comprises an Internet protocol (IP) address of the one of the other home gateways having the unoccupied tuner.