Patent ID: 7804772

Claim:
A method of managing traffic in a shared communications channel, the shared communications channel being shared by a plurality of subscribers, each of the plurality of subscribers being assigned to a corresponding service identifier (SID) from among a plurality of SIDs, comprising: (a) receiving, by a communications receiver, a SID from a media access controller (MAC) corresponding to a subscriber from among the plurality of subscribers; (b) receiving, by the communications receiver, a plurality of signals from the plurality of subscribers over the shared communications channel; (c) performing, by the communications receiver, a spectral analysis of one of the plurality of signals corresponding to the SID to provide quality information regarding the shared communications channel, the spectral analysis comprising: (i) generating a plurality of frequency ranges based upon the one of the plurality of signals, each of the plurality of frequency ranges corresponding to different spectral characteristics, (ii) selecting one of the frequency ranges from among the plurality of frequency ranges to provide a selected frequency range, and (iii) performing the spectral analysis of the selected frequency range to provide spectral measurements arranged in a plurality of bins, each bin corresponding to a respective frequency range; and (d) adjusting transmission characteristics of the subscriber based on the spectral measurements.