Patent ID: 8134921

Claim:
An apparatus, comprising: one or more processors operable to: generate a bandwidth grant message corresponding to a time segment; identify a portion of the time segment to be formatted with first time slots for cable modems, the first time slots requested by received bandwidth request messages originating from the cable modems; determine whether a remaining portion of the time segment can accommodate more than a preset number of broadcast contention slots, the broadcast contention slots providing upstream bandwidth for signaling; if the remaining portion of the time segment can accommodate more than the preset number of broadcast contention slots, format the bandwidth grant message with an unsolicited second time slot for a selected one of the cable modems, the unsolicited time slot providing upstream bandwidth for uploading user data; and transmit the formatted bandwidth grant message, the transmitted bandwidth grant message including both the first requested time slot for the selected cable modem and the unsolicited second time slot for the selected cable modem.