A SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR DISTRIBUTING INFORMATION VIA A COMMUNICATION NETWORK

摘要

A communication system (100) for distributing information via an HFC network to subscriber destinations (109) including a multi-port switch (119), one or more radio frequency (RF) modems (121) coupled to restrictive ports of the switch, a combiner (125) and a transmitter (127). The switch forwards source information to the RF modems based on address information. Each RF modem modulates and up converts information from the switch to an RF signal within a respective subscriber channel of the television broadcast spectrum. Each channel is assigned to one or more subscribers, and is subscriber is allocated unshared bandwidth. The HFC network includes a distribution point (103), one or more optical nodes (105) and corresponding coaxial cables (137). Each subscriber destination includes a gateway device (139) that is tuned to a corresponding channel to retrieve source information from that channel, and to deliver the information to one or more local subscriber devices.