Patent ID: 7385995
Filing Date: 2008-06-10
Classification: H04J,H04L,H04Q

Abstract:
1. In an optical network termination in optical communication with an optical line termination via a passive optical network and operably coupled to at least one subscriber device, a burst buffer comprising: an upstream buffer portion configured to buffer upstream data from the at least one subscriber device; means for providing a representation of a status of the upstream buffer portion to the optical line termination for use in dynamic bandwidth allocation by the optical line termination, wherein the upstream buffer portion includes a plurality of sub-buffers, each sub-buffer being configured to buffer one of a plurality of data contents of the upstream data, wherein the status of the upstream buffer portion includes a fullness of each of a subset of the sub-buffers; and a control module configured to modify a size of each of the sub-buffers of the upstream buffer portion based at least in part on the fullness of the sub-buffer, wherein the control module modifies the size of each of the sub-buffers by adjusting a logical location of each sub-buffer such that memory elements from one sub-buffer is freed to increase a size of another sub-buffer.