Alloptic, Inc.

Glen Kramer

Gerry Pesavento

Jerchen Kuo

Dumitru Gruia

A point-to-multipoint passive optical network transmits downstream data from an optical line terminal (OLT) to multiple optical network units (ONUs) in variable-length packets and upstream data from the ONUs to the OLT in variable-length packets utilizing time division multiplexing to avoid transmission collisions. In an embodiment, the variable-length downstream packets and the variable-length upstream packets are formatted according to IEEE 802.3. In an embodiment, the length of the variable-length downstream and upstream packets is related to the length of Internet protocol (IP) datagrams carried within the packets.

Point-to-multipoint passive optical network that utilizes variable-length packets

An optical access network and method for transmitting optical data in the network utilizes an interleaved polling scheme to efficiently use the available bandwidth of the network. The use of the interleaved polling scheme allows a central terminal of the network to dynamically allocate upstream bandwidth from remote terminals of the network to the central terminal in response to the amount of data that is waiting at the remote terminals to be transmitted to the OLT. In one embodiment, the optical access network is based on Passive Optical Network (PON) technology. In another embodiment, the optical access network utilizes Ethernet protocol to encapsulate data in Ethernet frames for transmission. Thus, in these embodiments, the optical access network includes all of the advantages associated with the PON technology and/or the Ethernet protocol. In addition, since the allocation of upstream bandwidth is on an as needed basis, loss of bandwidth due to unfilled time slots is substantially eliminated.

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Davis, CA, United States of America

Glen Kramer