channel clearly as capacity requirements dictate embodiments having higher rate packet interfaces and additional us and ds channels are readily extrapolated from the first illustrative embodiment the mini cmts is compatible with and directly or indirectly supports analog and digital modulated tv signals docsis cable modem services voip based on packetcable or other standards compliance with opencable standards legacy telephony and set top boxes the downstream data received from a regional packet network or other wan via 100 mbps ethernet protocol is presented via the mini cmts 39 s mac to the downstream modulator formatted in 188 bytes mpeg frames which are in turn coded and modulated into a 44 mhz if signal the mpeg stream is compatible with and encapsulates docsis frames the analog return spectrum 5 42 mhz is digitized and selected upstream docsis channels are demodulated and the data extracted the packets are delivered by the docsis mac to the ethernet interface and then transferred optically to the head end or sh via the packet network similarly from the same digitized analog return spectrum 5 42 mhz legacy channels are selected converted and packetized into ethernet frames using either a layer 2 or layer 3 protocol these frames are forwarded to the cable head end by commercially available switches at the head end a master dac controller extracts the bit streams from the ethernet frames and recovers the analog channels fig4 a through 4e illustrate conceptually the process of digitizing a legacy upstream channel fig5 illustrates the layer 2 encapsulation of digitized return channel data fig6 illustrates the layer 3 encapsulation of digitized return channel data this selection of only desired return channels to be forwarded upstream yields a more efficient utilization of us bandwidth fig3 a is a top level.