The SDN (Software Defined Network) concept has made impressive progress in both enterprise and transport networks. The core idea behind SDN is the separation of control and data forwarding planes. However, the SDN concept is still in an early stage of penetrating optical access networks, especially passive optical networks. A major difficulty of SDN for PON (Passive Optical Network) is how to separate control and forwarding planes in optical access networks. In this paper we discuss the first step towards SDN for optical access networks - determining the control plane of optical access networks, and separating it from the data forwarding plane. We will first discuss SDN for Active Optical Network (AON) and then discuss SDN for PONs.
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