Patent ID: 8437355
Filing Date: 2013-05-07
Classification: H04B,H04Q

Abstract:
1. A passive optical network, comprising: an optical fiber; a plurality of optical networks units (ONUs) coupled to the optical fiber and having a plurality of business traffic containers (TCONTs) and residential TCONTS, each of the business TCONTs configured to receive a respective class of business traffic from a respective business customer, each of the residential TCONTs configured to receive a respective class of residential traffic; and an optical line termination (OLT) coupled to the optical fiber, the OLT having dynamic bandwidth allocation (DBA) logic configured to implement a scheduling hierarchy for scheduling transmissions from the business and residential TCONTs to the OLT across the optical fiber, the scheduling hierarchy having at least a first scheduling layer, a second scheduling layer, and a third scheduling layer, wherein the first scheduling layer has a plurality of schedulers for scheduling business traffic from the business TCONTs, each of the plurality of schedulers of the first scheduling layer for scheduling business traffic from a respective plurality of the business TCONTs servicing a single respective business customer thereby enabling traffic flows of different classes from the single respective business customer to be discriminated on a per class basis via the scheduling hierarchy, wherein the second scheduling layer has at least a business traffic scheduler and a residential traffic scheduler, the business traffic scheduler for scheduling the business traffic scheduled by the plurality of schedulers of the first scheduling layer thereby enabling traffic flows from different business customers to be discriminated on a per customer basis via the scheduling hierarchy, the residential traffic scheduler for scheduling residential traffic from the residential TCONTs thereby enabling traffic flows of different classes of the residential traffic from the residential TCONTs to be discriminated on a per class basis via the scheduling hierarchy, wherein the third scheduling layer has at least a scheduler for scheduling the business traffic scheduled by the business traffic scheduler and the residential traffic scheduled by the residential traffic scheduler thereby enabling the business traffic scheduled by the business traffic scheduler to be discriminated, via the scheduling hierarchy, relative to the residential traffic scheduled by the residential traffic scheduler.