Traffic Switching In Hybrid Fiber Coaxial (HFC) Network
AssigneeBroadcom Corporation
InventorsEdward Wayne Boyd, Joel I. Danzig, Ernie Bahm, Lawrence Drew Davis
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
Embodiments enable an Ethernet over Coaxial (EoC) Coaxial Media Converter (CMC) that implements only a subset of the functions (e.g., MAC and PHY) of a cable modem termination system (CMTS). The CMC sits between an optical line terminal (OLT) and a plurality of cable modems (CMs) that it serves. From the network management side at the OLT, the CMC appears and can be managed like an optical network unit (ONU). From the subscriber side, the CMC provides the same connectivity functions to the CMs as a CMTS and serves to terminate coaxial connections from the CMs.
Claims20
A coaxial media converter (CMC), comprising:
- an optical transceiver;
- a first chip, coupled to the optical transceiver, that implements an Ethernet Passive Optical Network (EPON) Medium Access Control (MAC) layer;
- a second chip, coupled to the first chip, that implements a Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification (DOCSIS) MAC layer;
- and
- a DOCSIS physical layer (PHY) chip, coupled to the second chip.
A method for traffic switching from a cable modem to an optical line terminal (OLT), comprising:
- receiving an Ethernet frame from the cable modem, the Ethernet frame associated with an upstream service flow from the cable modem;
- retrieving a cable modem index associated with the cable modem and a class of service associated with the upstream service flow;
- generating a tag based on the retrieved cable modem index and the class of service;
- inserting the generated tag into the Ethernet frame;
- and
- transmitting the Ethernet frame to the optical line terminal.
A method for traffic switching from an optical line terminal (OLT) to a cable modem, comprising:
- receiving an Ethernet frame from the OLT;
- processing a tag contained in the Ethernet frame to retrieve a cable modem index and a class of service embedded in the tag;
- determining from the retrieved cable modem index and the class of service a destination cable modem and a downstream service flow at the destination cable modem;
- and
- transmitting the Ethernet frame to the destination cable modem.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.