Highly integrated media access control

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-8934503-B2
Application number	US-201313917972-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Jun 14, 2013
Priority date	Sep 27, 2001
Publication date	Jan 13, 2015
Grant date	Jan 13, 2015

Abstract

A supervisory communications device, such as a headend device within a communications network, monitors and controls communications with a plurality of remote communications devices throughout a widely distributed network. The supervisory device allocates bandwidth on the upstream channels by sending MAP messages over its downstream channel. A highly integrated media access controller integrated circuit (MAC IC) operates within the headend to provide lower level processing on signals exchanged with the remote devices. The enhanced functionality of the MAC IC relieves the processing burden on the headend CPU and increases packet throughput. The enhanced functionality includes header suppression and expansion. DES encryption and decryption, fragment reassembly, concatenation, and DMA operations.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A media access controller integrated circuit (MAC IC), comprising:
a pre-processor configured to receive an egress signal from a source node, and to extract payload frames included in the egress signal;
a controller configured to identify a fragmented payload frame from among the extracted payload frames, and to reassemble the fragmented payload frame according to an instruction included in a header of the egress signal; and
a post-processor configured t…

Assignees

• Broadcom Corp

Inventors

• Denney Lisa Voigt
• Moshar Hooman
• Horton John Daniel
• Lansing Shane Patrick
• Nazareth Sean Francis
• Pantelias Niki Roberta

Classifications

• H04L12/2801 Primary

  Electricity · mapped topic

• H04L49/9094

  Electricity · mapped topic

• H04L29/0653 Primary

  Electricity · mapped topic

• H04L12/5693

  Electricity · mapped topic

• H04L47/52

  Electricity · mapped topic