Allocation and scheduling algorithms for IEEE 802.14 and MCNS in hybrid fiber coaxial networks

IEEE 802.14 and MCNS (multimedia cable network system) are two standards developed for the hybrid fiber coaxial (HFC) CATV networks. Both standards model an upstream channel as a stream of minislots. But their philosophies on resolving collisions in the shared upstream channel are rather different, where IEEE 802.14 adopts the priority+FIFO first-transmission rule and the n-ary tree retransmission rule, and MCNS adopts the binary exponential backoff algorithm with adjustable window sizes. Both provide reservation access, while IEEE 802.14 and MCNS also support isochronous access and immediate access, respectively. In this paper, we try to prepare a suggestion list for vendors on how to allocate minislots for reservation access and immediate access and how to schedule the reserved bandwidth, which greatly affect the performance of a cable network and are left open by the standards.