Patent ID: 7548548

Claim:
A method for receiving DOCSIS upstream bursts during contention intervals in an upstream linecard in a cable modem termination system having one or more PHY receivers, said upstream linecard coupled to a plurality of optical nodes, said reception carried out without aggregation of noise, comprising the steps: (1) determining when a DOCSIS contention interval exists; (2) determining how many PHY receivers are available during said contention interval to receive upstream DOCSIS bursts from said plurality of optical nodes; (3) sensing energy of incoming DOCSIS bursts at inputs of said upstream linecard coupled to said optical nodes; (4) determining if any PHY receiver is available to receive a DOCSIS burst which is creating said energy which was sensed; (5) if no PHY receiver is available to process a burst whose energy was sensed, ignoring said burst; (6) if a PHY receiver is available to process the incoming burst whose energy is being sensed and said contention interval is still occurring, picking an available PHY receiver and switching a crosspoint switch to coupled an input at which is arriving said burst whose energy was sensed to an output coupled to said available PHY receiver.