Patent ID: 7684403
Filing Date: 2010-03-23
Classification: H04Q

Abstract:
1. A forwarding method of an Ethernet Passive Optical Network (EPON) bridge apparatus, which executes bridging between a network port and a PON port including a plurality of logical ports via a Logical Link Identifier (LLID) assigned to an Optical Network Unit (ONU) in the PON, the method comprising steps of: receiving a frame from the network port or the PON port; associating a port among the network port and the PON port through which the frame was received with a source MAC address of the received frame and recording that information to a forwarding database (FDB) table configured to keep the port information for MAC addresses; searching the FDB table for a destination MAC address of the received frame to get the port information of the destination MAC address; (i) forwarding the received frame to the network port after removing an LLID therefrom, when upon searching the FDB table a destination MAC address of an upstream frame received is present in the network port; and (ii) forwarding the received frame to the PON port after adding an LLID corresponding to the destination MAC address to the received frame, when upon searching the FDB table a destination MAC address is present in the lower PON port.