Patent ID: 8472442

Claim:
A computerized method of classifying downstream service flows in a Cable Modem Termination System (CTMS), the method comprising: extracting a destination address of an input packet, which is an Ethernet packet; determining by a processor whether an Ethernet Media Access Control (MAC) address of a cable modem (CM) to which the input packet is addressed exists in a MAC address search table, by searching the MAC address search table based on the destination address; composing a search character string comprising the Ethernet MAC address of the CM retrieved from the MAC address search table and Quality of Service (QoS) information included in the input packet when the Ethernet MAC address of the CM corresponding to the destination address exists in the MAC address search table; searching, with the search character string, for a reference address corresponding to the search character string where the reference address is an index into a service flow information table, and searching for service flow information based on the retrieved reference address when the reference address is retrieved; composing an internal header including the retrieved service flow information and adding the internal header to the input packet to form a downstream packet, wherein contents of the input packet are not modified, and wherein the retrieved service flow information includes a priority applied to transmission scheduling of the downstream packet; and providing the downstream packet to a downstream channel scheduling unit, wherein when the Ethernet MAC address of the CM to which the input packet is addressed is not found in the MAC address search table, the downstream service flow is classified as a broadcast service flow that is associated with an index into a predetermined service flow information table from which broadcast service flow information is retrieved; and the retrieved broadcast service flow information is included in the internal header, and the internal header is added to the input packet to form the downstream packet.