1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a method of initializing, provisioning, and managing a cable modem and a customer premise equipment device. The invention further relates to a subscriber gateway device for connecting to a provider network.
2. Background Art
The modern hybrid fiber coax (HFC) network in its typical implementation includes fiber from the head end to the local network fiber node, and includes coax cable for the final signal distribution through a neighborhood. Modern two-way HFC infrastructures are capable of sending gigabytes of data per second to small pockets of homes in a narrowcast way.
Product and service offerings over broadband networks, including cable networks, have expanded in recent years. The cable networks are now used for additional products and services, for example, many cable networks now offer high speed data service in addition to video programming. In the modern HFC network, head end infrastructure may include a cable modem termination system (CMTS) for providing data over cable services in addition to video quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) infrastructure for providing video content. The video QAMs may connect to various content sources, while the CMTS connects subscribers to the provider network. The provider network may include a variety of infrastructure for providing various services. For example, the provider network may include Domain Name System (DNS) servers, dynamic host configuration protocol (DHCP) servers, voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) gateways and soft switches for connecting to phone networks, among other systems for providing services to subscribers. Further, advances in network technology allow some functionality to be provided from locations upstream or downstream of the traditional head end.
At a subscriber location, a cable modem and a customer premise equipment device such as a set-top box communicate with the head end over the HFC network. In certain applications, it is desirable for both the cable modem and the set-top box to each have a network address. Traditionally, the cable modem utilizes known initializing and provisioning techniques to obtain a network address and establish a connection to the provider network. For example, the data-over-cable service interface specifications (DOCSIS) specify various protocols for managing the connection of a cable modem to a CMTS. In a traditional application where the provider network is an Internet protocol (IP) network utilizing IPv4 addressing, the cable modem can obtain an IP address in a known manner, and customer premise equipment connected to the HFC network through the cable modem may obtain an IP address, for example, by utilizing DHCP.
Although the traditional IPv4 networks have been used for many applications that have been successful, this addressing approach has certain limitations, for example, the number of addresses available. There is a desire to utilize a more advanced addressing technique such as, for example, IPv6.
DOCSIS 3.0 does provide a way to initialize, provision, and manage a cable modem connected to an IPv4 or an IPv6 provider network. During initialization, the CMTS initializes the cable modem such that the cable modem obtains an appropriate IP address. However, in this approach, a customer premise equipment device such as a set-top box connected to the cable modem that needs to dynamically obtain an address is not made aware of the address type of the provider network. In order for the set-top box to obtain a network address, the set-top box could sequentially make requests for different types of addresses until eventually an address of the correct type is requested and obtained. For example, a set-top box could request an IPv4 address, and if there is no response, request an IPv6 address. Unfortunately, in a large network, these transactions create significant excessive and unwanted network traffic.
For the foregoing reasons, there is a need for a method of initializing, provisioning, and managing a cable modem and a customer premise equipment device in which the customer premise equipment device is informed as to the proper network address type of the network so as to avoid unnecessary transactions which become very significant in a large network implementation.