Communication device and method for packet-based OFDM communications with differing length cyclic prefixes

The present invention discloses a communication device and method for packet-based OFDM communications with differing length cyclic prefixes. A coaxial network communication node receives multimedia content with one or more other nodes in a coaxial network. The node determines a delay-spread of a coaxial channel based on receipt of a probe from a transmitting node and configures a channel-shortening time-domain equalizer (TEQ) filter to effectively shorten the channel based on the delay spread. The node instructs the transmitting node to shorten a length of a cyclic prefix for subsequent packet-based transmissions to be received from the transmitting node. The probe is stored and reused until the channel-shortening TEQ filter converges. The nodes may be configured to communicate in accordance with the Multimedia over Coax Alliance (MoCA registered trademark) specifications.