Patent ID: 7532627

Claim:
A method, comprising: transferring a wideband channel descriptor message from a cable modem termination system (CMTS), over a downstream channel, to a wideband cable modem including a plurality of Quadrature Amplitude Modulators (QAMs), the wideband channel descriptor message defining a wideband upstream channel that is distributed over a plurality of modulated upstream channels, wherein the modulated channels each extend to a different one of the cable modem QAMs; using the cable modem to range on the modulated upstream channels, wherein after the ranging the cable modem is contemporaneously communicatively coupled to the plurality of modulated channels; queuing packets on the wideband cable modem into a stream for an upstream cable transmission over the wideband upstream channel; partitioning the stream into a plurality of transmission blocks; sending a plurality of requests for upstream bandwidth over the wideband channel, the plurality of requests distributed over the modulated upstream channels subsequent to completing ranging on the modulated upstream channels, wherein each request is for an amount of bandwidth corresponding to one of the transmission blocks; and after receiving back a bandwidth grant, transmitting at least a portion of data taken from a first one of the transmission blocks according to the received bandwidth grant regardless of whether the received bandwidth grant is associated with the first transmission block; wherein if the received bandwidth grant is associated with a transmission block other than the first transmission block, said transmission from the first transmission block in response to receiving the bandwidth grant disassociates bandwidth grants from bandwidth requests.