Method of controlling data sampling clocking of asynchronous network nodes in a frame-based communications network

1. A method of controlling data sampling clocking of asynchronous home phone network nodes, each asynchronous home phone network node having a local clock and transmitting and receiving packets to and from an asynchronous home phone network according to an asynchronous home phone network media access protocol, comprising:

designating as a master node an asynchronous home phone network node capable of transmitting and receiving packets on the asynchronous home phone network;

designating as a slave node each non-master asynchronous home phone network node which desires to synchronously transport packets across the asynchronous home phone network;

synchronizing a master node clock of the master node with a slave node clock of each slave node;

continuously correcting each slave node clock compared with the master node clock to smooth slave clock error to an average of zero compared with the master clock as a reference using timestamp information from the master node; and

deriving a derivative clock at the slave node from the continuously correcting each slave node clock to control data sampling at the slave node;

wherein an asynchronous home phone network node with direct access to synchronous cable modem network timing information is designated the master node.

2. The method of claim 1 , wherein the step of deriving a derivative clock includes selecting a pair of integers to be used to divide in serial stages a synchronized tracked slave clock to a lower frequency to control the data sampling clocking.

3. The method of claim 1 , wherein each non-master asynchronous home phone network mode is a home phone network to analog voice packet converter.

4. The method of claim 3 , wherein the data sampling at the slave node is analog voice sampling.