Patent ID: 6975655

Claim:
A method of controlling data sampling clocking of asynchronous home phone network nodes, each asynchronous home phone network node having a local clock and transmitting and receiving packets to and from an asynchronous home phone network according to an asynchronous home phone network media access protocol, comprising: designating as a master node an asynchronous home phone network node capable of transmitting and receiving packets on the asynchronous home phone network; designating as a slave node each non-master asynchronous home phone network node which desires to synchronously transport packets across the asynchronous home phone network; synchronizing a master node clock of the master node with a slave node clock of each slave node; continuously correcting each slave node clock compared with the master node clock to smooth slave clock error to an average of zero compared with the master clock as a reference using timestamp information from the master node; and deriving a derivative clock at the slave node from the continuously correcting each slave node clock to control data sampling at the slave node; wherein an asynchronous home phone network node with direct access to synchronous cable modem network timing information is designated the master node.