ASSIGNING QOS TO CABLE SERVICE FLOWS

A novel method of handling network traffic for cable service flows in a distributed cable system is presented. Such a cable systems use remote distribution nodes in the fields to handle RF communications with cable modems in a distributed fashion. A packet engine is configured to assign a logical interface to each cable service flow in the cable system. Each logical interface in the packet engine is uniquely identifiable by a compound identifier that includes the identifier of the corresponding service flow and the identifier of the remote distribution node. Each service flow is assigned a class of service (CoS) at the packet engine and guarantee a certain level of quality of service (QoS). In some embodiments, each cable service flow is assigned a CoS priority number. For each possible CoS priority number, the packet engine is configured to provide certain resources at certain quality level, i.e., certain level of QoS. Each remote distribution node tags each packet of a cable service flow with its assigned CoS priority number and forwards the tagged packet toward the packet engine.