METHOD FOR ESTABLISHING A CONNECTION BETWEEN AN INTERACTIVE NETWORK ADAPTER AND A NETWORK INTERFACE UNIT AS WELL AS NETWORK INTERFACE UNIT AND INTERACTIVE NETWORK ADAPTER

摘要

The invention deals with the establishment and modification of connections between network interface units (11) such as a cable modem and a head-end (12) at the cable operator's side. There is already specified a return channel in the DVB standard. In this specification there is a process specified named sign-on procedure, which is always performed after an upstream frequency/channel change. During this sign-on procedure on the terminal side the synchronisation in time and the power level adjustment are the main tasks to be performed. This individual adjustment can be quite long, depending on the configuration of the network and on the terminal location in the cable access network. According to the invention modified connection establishment procedures and connection changing procedures are defined. For this purpose, the head-end device transmits some parameter change values to the terminals during connection establishment. Those parameter change values are, for example, power level adjustment values and time offset adjustment values. Furthermore modified connect establishment messages, re-provision messages and transmission control messages are specified which are used to simplify the connection establishment and connection change processes. With this proposal it is possible that the timing adjustment need not be performed in a relative big ranging area and also the power level adjustment can be accelerated subjectively.