Models for data transmission delay in cable networks

Cable networks have been upgraded in recent years to support bidirectional traffic rather than just unidirectional television signals. Thus, it has become possible to use cable networks for internet browsing and telephony. In this paper, we propose delay models to determine how this bidirectional traffic is best handled and to evaluate the resulting performance of the network, notably its delay properties. It is shown that these models, variations on the repairman problem and the bulk service queue, lead to actual improvements in the data transmission schedules for cable networks. Moreover, these models can be combined in order to arrive at approximations for the average packet delay. Our theoretical calculations are backed up by simulations.