Patent ID: 7986879

Claim:
An apparatus for polling in an Ethernet Passive Optical Network (EPON) including multiple Optical Network Units (ONUs) sharing optical channels of the EPON with one another and transmitting traffic, the apparatus comprising: an Optical Line Terminal (OLT) to discriminate among a plurality of ONUs gaining access to the EPON among the multiple ONUs, collect routing information on the plurality of ONUs gaining access to the EPON, classify the plurality of ONUs gaining access to the EPON into two or more ONU groups according to the collected routing information, and carry out forming a polling cycle and allocating bandwidth on each ONU group, wherein the OLT forms the first polling cycle, corresponding to the first ONU group among the two or more ONU groups, forms the second polling cycle, corresponding to the second ONU group among the two or more ONU groups, receives the REPORT messages representing buffer sizes from the ONUs in the first ONU group every first polling cycle, and forms a GATE messages regarding the allocation of bandwidth corresponding to the buffer size to deliver the formed GATE messages to the ONUs in the first ONU group, and receives REPORT messages representing a buffer size from ONUs in the second ONU group every second polling cycle, and forms GATE messages regarding the allocation of bandwidth corresponding to the buffer size to deliver the formed GATE messages to the ONUs in the second ONU group.