Computer communication

Reason for design
Data transfer over cable is a very important aspect of today’s communication devices. Most cables used for data transfer in 1997 were used only for television purposes, and the direction of data flow was downstream, or from the head-end to the station. If this setup could be altered, then cables could also be used to receive data from stations, or upstream flow. In order for data to be transferable (able to go upstream as well as downstream), the cable must be upgraded to a combination of optical fiber and coaxial cable, or simply a hybrid fiber coax (HFC). In this concept lies the ability for high-speed digital data transfer between the head-end and the stations. The authors of this paper explore their idea for a media access protocol that can efficiently accomplish this task – high-speed digital data transfer over a cable.

How it works
The concept to do this is simple, and involves two key players. One is the Head-End (HE). The HE can be thought...