Abstract: A method and apparatus for reducing processing requirements of a pool of soft modems is disclosed. In one embodiment, the method comprises queuing one or more retrain requests and responding to the queued retrain requests within a period of time to one or more modems that correspond to the queued retrain requests.

Abstract: A method and apparatus for reducing processing requirements of a pool of soft modems is disclosed. In one embodiment, the method comprises queuing one or more retrain requests and responding to the queued retrain requests within a period of time to one or more modems that correspond to the queued retrain requests.

Abstract: A method and apparatus for reducing processing requests of a pool of soft modems is disclosed. In one embodiment, a remote access concentrator comprises a memory, a processor, an interface bus, and a host interface. In one embodiment, the processor is coupled to the memory to operate a pool of soft modems in parallel with a common retrain handler, the common retrain handler includes a queue to store retrain requests, a request management block to retrieve the retrain requests and to identify modems that correspond to the retrain requests within a period of time, and a retrain engine to perform retrain procedures in accordance with modem standards.

Abstract: A method and apparatus for improving fault tolerance of a midplane system is disclosed. In one embodiment, the method and apparatus provide a rear optical interface on a transition card of the midplane system. The method and apparatus then allow a main card of the midplane system to access a fiber optic cable coupled to the rear optical interface via an optic transceiver and a data format transceiver on the transition card.