
Inside a Cable Modem
• MAC (Media Access Control) sub-layer in the network
stack (runs on both the cable modem and head-end)
– Extracts data from MPEG frames, filters data, protocol
execution, times transmission of upstream bursts
– Sits between the receive and transmit paths
– Can be implemented in hardware or split between hardware
and software
– Assigns upstream frequency & data rate
– Allocates time-slots (upstream bandwidth)
– The MAC is complex compared to an Ethernet MAC
– Requires CPU to handle MAC layer functions
– Companies: Broadcom, Texas Instruments, Conexant
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