Narad Networks, Inc.

Ciena Corporation

Manas Tandon

Kiran Meghashyam Rege

Subrahmanyam Dravida

Dev Vrat Gupta

Satya Vrat Gupta

Frederick Peralta

Gautam Desai

Ravi Kumar

DeQuan Wu

Sanjiv Nanda

Prasad Dorbala

Dey V Gupta

Anoop Jayadevan

Sitaram Dikshitulu

Nitin Sonawane

The present system uses point-to-point data links between intelligent network elements located in the feeder/distribution network to provide reliable, secure, bi-directional broadband access. Digital signals, or messages, are terminated at the intelligent network elements, switched and regenerated for transmission across additional upstream or downstream data links as needed to connect a home to a headend or router. Messages indicative of an end user routing ID (RID) are identified and the information extracted for user with successive messages. In this manner, the data links are made over relatively short runs of coax cable, which can provide greater bandwidth than the typical end-to-end feeder/distribution connection between a home and the headend or optical network unit.

System and method for mapping end user identifiers to access device identifiers

The present system uses point-to-point data links between intelligent network elements located in the feeder/distribution network to provide reliable, secure, bi-directional broadband access. Digital signals are terminated at the intelligent network elements, switched and regenerated for transmission across additional upstream or downstream data links as needed to connect a home to a headend or router. The intelligent network elements can be co-located with or replace the standard network elements to take advantage of existing network configurations. A tree-and-branch network architecture is therefore established in which each intelligent network element is assigned a routing ID employed in the point-to-point transmissions while leaving legacy analog signals unimpeded. In this manner, the data links are made over relatively short runs of coax cable, which can provide greater bandwidth than the typical end-to-end feeder/distribution connection between a home and the headend or optical network unit.

Network architecture for intelligent network elements

The present system uses point-to-point data links between intelligent network elements located in the feeder/distribution network to provide reliable, secure, bidirectional broadband access. Digital signals are terminated at the intelligent network elements, switched and regenerated for transmission across additional upstream or downstream data links as needed to connect a home to a headend or router. The intelligent network elements are co-located with or replace the standard network elements to take advantage of existing network configurations. The standard network elements are selectively replaced by the intelligent network elements in an incremental approach. A tree-and-branch network architecture is established in which each intelligent network element is assigned a routing ID employed in the point-to-point transmissions while leaving legacy analog signals unimpeded. The data links are made over relatively short runs of coax cable, which provides greater bandwidth than typical end-to-end feeder/distribution connections between a home and the headend or optical network unit.

Hybrid fiber/coax networks employ the existing cable plant used for cable TV and transmit data signals in a frequency bandwidth above that which is used for cable TV. As this cable plant was deployed in a tree and branch topology, data transmissions may be susceptible to noise, variable transmission loss and frequency dispersion, particularly in the upstream direction. Further, due to the tree and branch topology, homes at the far end of the network experience much greater loss than do the homes that are near to the headend/ONU. The present system, which uses point-to-point data links between intelligent network elements located in the feeder/distribution network to provide reliable, secure, bi-directional broadband access. Digital signals are terminated at the intelligent network elements, switched and regenerated for transmission across additional upstream or downstream data links as needed to connect a home to a headend or router. The intelligent network elements can be co-located with or replace the standard network elements to take advantage of existing network configurations. The standard network elements can be selectively replaced by the intelligent network elements in an incremental approach. A method of discovering the network topology includes sending a message from one of the network elements on a transmission path to a topology server, the message including information identifying the one network element. At each intermediate network element in the transmission path, information identifying each intermediate network element is appended to the message. In this manner, the data links are made over relatively short runs of coax cable, which can provide greater bandwidth than the typical end-to-end feeder/distribution connection between a home and the headend or optical network unit.

Broadband system with topology discovery

Hybrid fiber/coax networks employ the existing cable plant used for cable TV and transmit data signals in a frequency bandwidth above that which is used for cable TV. The present system used point-to-point data links between intelligent network elements located in the feeder/distribution network to provide reliable, secure, bi-directional broadband access. Digital signals are terminated at the intelligent network elements, switched and regenerated for transmission across additional upstream or downstream data links as needed to connect a home to a headend or router. The intelligent network elements can be co-located with or replace the standard network elements. A tree-and-branch network architecture is therefore established in which each intelligent network element is assigned a routing ID employed in the point-to-point transmissions while leaving legacy analog signals unimpeded. In this manner, the data links are made over relatively short runs of coax cable, which can provide greater bandwidth.

Hybrid fiber/coax networks employ the existing cable plant used for cable TV and transmit data signals in a frequency bandwidth above that which is used for cable TV. As this cable plant was deployed in a tree and branch topology, data transmissions may be susceptible to noise, variable transmission loss and frequency dispersion, particularly in the upstream direction. Further, due to the tree and branch topology, homes at the far end of the network experience much greater loss than do the homes that are near to the headend/ONU. The present system, which uses point-to-point data links between intelligent network elements located in the feeder/distribution network to provide reliable, secure, bi-directional broadband access. Digital signals are terminated at the intelligent network elements, switched and regenerated for transmission across additional upstream or downstream data links as needed to connect a home to a headend or router. The intelligent network elements can be co-located with or replace the standard network elements to take advantage of existing network configurations. The standard network elements can be selectively replaced by the intelligent network elements in an incremental approach. Packet handling at a network element includes receiving flows of packets from one or more devices coupled to the network element. A service instance associated with each packet in the packet flows is identified and a quality of service (QoS) class for each packet from the corresponding service instance is determined. The packet flow associated with each service instance is regulated according to corresponding policing criteria. In this manner, the data links are made over relatively short runs of coax cable, which can provide greater bandwidth than the typical end-to-end feeder/distribution connection between a home and the headend or optical network unit.

Broadband system with traffic policing and transmission scheduling

Hybrid fiber/coax networks employ the existing cable plant used for cable TV and transmit data signals in a frequency bandwidth above that which is used for cable TV. As this cable plant was deployed in a tree and branch topology, data transmissions may be susceptible to noise, variable transmission loss and frequency dispersion, particularly in the upstream direction. Further, due to the tree and branch topology, homes at the far end of the network experience much greater loss than do the homes that are near to the headend/ONU. The present system, which uses point-to-point data links between intelligent network elements located in the feeder/distribution network to provide reliable, secure, bi-directional broadband access. Digital signals, or messages, are terminated at the intelligent network elements, switched and regenerated for transmission across additional upstream or downstream data links as needed to connect a home to a headend or router. Messages indicative of an end user routing ID (RID) are identified and the information extracted for user with successive messages. In this manner, the data links are made over relatively short runs of coax cable, which can provide greater bandwidth than the typical end-to-end feeder/distribution connection between a home and the headend or optical network unit.

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Waltham, MA, United States of America

Manas Tandon