A method and an apparatus using a system level clocking scheme to remove jitter from multi-media packets distributed over an asynchronous network. The present invention overcomes the problems associated with jitter introduced in an asynchronous network by using various time stamps to synchronize a client device clock to a headend clock and to control the data flow in the client device to match the rate that the data is received by a broadband receiver coupled to the headend. The present invention allows the client device to synchronize to a selected one of a plurality of headend clock by including a clock adjustment factor along with the time stamps. The time stamps are added at the physical layer so that the time stamps correspond to the time the data packets are placed onto and received from the asynchronous network.