MoB2-1 : [Invited] What is Next for Ethernet PON?

Standardized in 2004, EPON has emerged as a highly successful technology – 3 million lines has been deployed in less than 2 years. The next generation of EPON will bring 10 Gb/s bandwidth to access networks. 1 Brief history of EPON In 2003, the Ethernet protocol celebrated its 30th birthday. All these years it has been adapting and evolving to become the very inexpensive and ubiquitous networking protocol that we know it today. In January 2001, IEEE formed a study group called Ethernet in the First Mile (EFM). This group was chartered with extending existing Ethernet technology into the subscriber access area, focusing on both residential and business access networks. Keeping with Ethernet tradition, the group set a goal of providing a significant increase in performance while minimizing equipment, operational, and maintenance costs. Ethernet Passive Optical Networks (EPONs) became one of focus areas of EFM. Ethernet PON is a PON-based network that carries data traffic encapsulated in Ethernet frames as defined by the IEEE 802.3 standard. Where possible, EPON utilizes the existing 802.3 specification, including usage of the existing 802.3 full-duplex Media Access Control (MAC). 2 Various PON architectures There exist several standards for PONs: BPON – Broadband Passive Optical Network specification was developed by FSAN and standardized by the ITU-T (recommendation G.983) over the period 1998-2003. BPON uses ATM as a bearer protocol. GPON – Gigabit-Capable Passive Optical Network was standardized by ITU-T G.984 in 2003-2004. It is based on unique derivative of the Generic Framing Procedure (G.7041) EPON – Ethernet Passive Optical Network was developed by the IEEE and standardized in June 2004. EPON uses Ethernet and Multi-Point Control Protocol. Both BPON and GPON architectures were conceived by the FSAN group, which is driven by major incumbent telecommunications operators. Most of the operators are heavily invested in providing legacy TDM services. Accordingly, both BPON and GPON are optimized for TDM traffic and rely on framing structures with very strict timing and synchronization requirements. In BPON, an upstream frame consists of 53 timeslots, were each timeslot comprised of one ATM cell and 3 bytes of overhead. When two consecutive timeslots are given to different ONUs, these 3 bytes, or approximately 154 ns, of the overhead should be sufficient to shut down the laser in the first ONU, turn on the laser in the second ONU, and perform gain adjustment and clock synchronization at the OLT. 49 MoB2-1 The 5th International Conference on Optical Internet (COIN 2006) Hyatt Regency Jeju, Korea / July 9 13, 2006 89-955301-4-6 9856