Techniques for rescheduling one or more timing intervals associated with a channel of a communication system. Responsive to a detected change in a property of the channel, a rescheduling algorithm identifies a given one of the timing intervals, within a schedule for the channel, that violates a system requirement in view of the detected change. The algorithm determines if the interval can be rescheduled to accommodate the detected change and if so reschedules the interval. If the interval cannot be rescheduled to accommodate the detected change, the interval is removed from the schedule. The rescheduling process may be repeated for each of the intervals in the channel schedule. The intervals in an illustrative embodiment may include, for example, grants, polls, free intervals or initial-maintenance intervals (IMIs) of an upstream channel in a DOCSIS-compliant CATV system.