Technique for forwarding packets in a gigabit passive optical network (GPON)

摘要

A technique for forwarding downstream packets in a GPON comprising an OLT unit having a physical PON port connected to N Optical Network Termination (ONT) units by optical fibers. The physical PON port accommodates N individual virtual GEM ports terminated with the N ONT units (ONTs) which form N:1 service. The technique comprises assigning in the physical port of the OLT unit a virtual GEM port being a shared broadcast GEM port terminated with all the N ONTs of the N:1 service. Those downstream packets applied to the physical PON port, which would otherwise be flooded—such as broadcast packets or packets having unknown destination address—will now be forwarded only via the shared broadcast GEM port.