Patent ID: 8462661

Claim:
A wireless communications system comprising: a hub; a plurality of radio access nodes, wherein each of the plurality of radio access nodes is coupled to the hub via a respective communication link; wherein the hub comprises: a plurality of forward devices that produce digitized versions of downstream analog radio frequency signals received from a plurality service provider interfaces; a plurality of reverse devices that produce reconstructed versions of upstream analog radio frequency signals for transmission to the plurality of service provider interfaces based on digitized version of the upstream analog radio frequency signals received from the plurality of radio access nodes; a plurality of transport interfaces to couple the hub to the plurality of communication links; and a switch having a plurality of ports communicatively coupled to the hub forward devices, the hub reverse devices, and the transport interfaces, wherein the switch selectively routes the digitized versions of the downstream analog radio frequency signals and the digitized versions of the upstream analog radio frequency signals among the plurality of ports; wherein the plurality of ports comprises a plurality of input ports and plurality of output ports; wherein the switch listens for a device identifier on at least one of the plurality of input ports to determine if a device is communicatively coupled to the at least one of the plurality of input ports; and wherein the switch transmits a respective port identifier over at least one of the plurality of output ports and, thereafter, searches a copy of a shared data structure maintained at the hub to determine if a device is communicatively coupled to the at least one of the plurality of output ports of the switch; wherein the device is one of the plurality of radio access nodes, one of the plurality of forward devices, or one of the plurality of reverse devices; wherein when the respective port identifier is received, the device which received the respective port identifier is configured to store the respective port identifier in a respective local copy of the shared data structure; wherein the copy of the shared data structure maintained at the hub is updated based on information in the respective local copy of the shared data structure; wherein the switch searches for the respective port identifier in the copy of the shared data structure maintained at the hub to determine which device received the respective port identifier.