Cisco Technology, Inc.

Kartik S Chandran

Sunil Khaunte

Prashant Gandhi

Chrisanto Leano

Kelly Schaefer

Jerry D Goodrich

Jin Zhang

Guenter E Roeck

Yong Lu

Disclosed are methods and apparatus for guaranteeing restoration of traffic between one or more cable modems and a backup cable modem termination system upon failure of an active cable modem termination system are disclosed. Subscriber information associated with one or more cable modems are received from an active cable modem termination system. The subscriber information includes one or more subscriber identifiers. For instance, the subscriber information may include a primary subscriber identifier that identifies a particular cable modem as well as a secondary subscriber identifier that is assigned to high priority traffic such as that being transmitted in real-time. In addition, the subscriber information may also include a scheduling type that is further used to categorize the real-time traffic, such as into voice or video traffic. The subscriber information is then prioritized in an order in which the transmission of messages between the one or more cable modems and the backup cable modem are to be restored. For instance, the subscriber information may be prioritized according to time of receipt of the subscriber information, presence of secondary subscriber identifier, and/or scheduling type. The cable modems are then polled according to this priority order.

Apparatus and method for restoring traffic during failover in a cable head end

A method of using DOCSIS 1.1 features to allow the addition of ISPs and QOS levels to a single cable modem without having to modify the CMTS is described in the various figures. Instead of using the SID of a data packet to determine the VPN tag of a data packet (DOCSIS 1.0), a service flow is used to identify the appropriate tag. This is done using the DOCSIS 1.1 configuration file. By doing so, the need for creating additional sub-interfaces in the cable modem interface does not arise. Instead, the configuration is modified at the provisioning server, i.e., the DHCP/TFTP server.

Method and apparatus for mapping an MPLS tag to a data packet in a headend

A method and apparatus for providing quality of service parameters for transmissions of multicast streams on a cable network is provided. A cable network headend connects an external network to a hybrid fiber coax or cable network. The cable network headend maintains a table of cable modems with entries associating each cable modem with one or more quality of service parameters. Virtual cable modem entries are created for multicast streams when indications of quality of service for multicast streams are received by the cable network headend. Multicast packets arriving at the cable network headend are processed using the stored quality of service parameters for the corresponding multicast stream. The multicast packets may then be transmitted, queued, or dropped depending on the specified parameters and traffic shaping or policing algorithms.

Method and apparatus for applying quality of service to multicast streams transmitted in a cable network

A time-based buffering system buffers data based upon how long the data should be held in order to comply with a traffic shaping policy. The data's source or destination need not be considered in determining where to buffer the data. The time-based buffering system includes a collection of time-based queues, each of which has a different time to dequeue. The system controlling traffic shaping determines how long a particular piece of data should be buffered (a 'traffic shaping delay') until it can be put on the network. Then, based upon that length of time, the system chooses one of the time-based of queues in which to buffer the data. That chosen queue has a dequeuing time that matches the traffic shaping delay. After the chosen queue dequeues its contents (at the specified time), it assumes a new dequeing time and is free to buffer new data that must be delayed by a time matching the new dequeuing time.

Network traffic shaping using time-based queues

The disclosed system provides management of multiple flows at a network device interface such as a router interface to assure maximum usage of the bandwidth available on the physical line while guaranteeing minimum reserved rates for individual flows. It accomplishes this by monitoring usage of a peak rate and a reserved rate for each data flow handled by the interface.

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Sunnyvale, CA, United States of America

Kartik S Chandran