Patent ID: 8081634

Claim:
A packet processing apparatus of a cable modem in hybrid fiber coaxial networks for processing a packet received from a cable modem termination system through a plurality of downstream channels, wherein a specific channel number is assigned to each channel and the cable modem termination system transmits downstream service identifier encoding information to the cable modem during an initializing process therebetween, the apparatus comprising: a plurality of channel receivers, each for generating an interface packet by inserting the channel number of a corresponding channel into the packet received through the corresponding channel; an input controller electrically connected to the plurality of channel receivers, the input controller configured to classify the interface packet into a resequencing packet, which needs to be resequenced, and an ordinary packet, for which resequencing is not necessary, using the downstream service identifier encoding information and stores the resequencing packet and the ordinary packet; a packet buffer storage electrically connected to the input controller, the packet buffer storage including a plurality of packet buffers for storing therein the resequencing packets and the ordinary packets; and a packet information storage electrically connected to the input controller, the packet information storage configured to store information on the packets stored in the packet buffers; wherein the packet buffer storage is formed of a packet buffer whose size is adjustable by a user; and wherein the packet information storage stores therein: a plurality of buffer descriptors, each buffer descriptor having a one-to-one correspondence with each packet buffer and storing information on the packet stored in the corresponding packet buffer; a free buffer list for indicating empty packet buffers; and a resequencing status list having a resequencing status descriptor for each downstream service, the resequencing status descriptor including a packet sequence number of a next output packet, an available buffer size and a pointer pointing to a buffer descriptor corresponding to a packet buffer in which an output-ready resequencing packet is stored.