Patent ID: 7330654

Claim:
A point-to-point emulation method for operating an Ethernet passive optical network having an optical line terminal (OLT), a plurality of optical network units (ONUs) each connected to the OLT, an ONU side comprising said plurality, and an OLT side comprising said OLT, wherein an augmented Ethernet frame transmitted between the OLT and the ONUs includes a destination address (DA) field representing a destination address, a source address (SA) field representing a source address, and a logical link identifier (LLID) field in which a unique LLID assigned to a respective object of the ONU side and an updated Ethernet type field identifying that the Ethernet frame has been augmented are recorded, the method comprising the steps of: assigning, on a one-to-one basis, LLIDs to ports of a structure comprising one of a bridge and an L2 (Layer 2) switch of the OLT side; learning which of the ports is a source port of a source address of the L2 switch of the OLT side; converting an existing Ethernet frame into the augmented Ethernet frame for transmission between the OLT and ONUs: upon receiving the augmented Ethernet frame, deleting, by the OLT, the LLID field contained in the augmented Ethernet frame and outputting an LLID field-deleted Ethernet frame to a structure port to which said unique LLID is assigned; transmitting, by said structure, the LLID field-deleted Ethernet frame to said source port; wherein during downstream transmission, the existing Ethernet frame is converted into an augmented Ethernet frame by inserting, by the OLT, the LLID field into the LLID field-deleted Ethernet frame in which an LLID of a destination ONU is recorded, updating the Ethernet type field in which an augmented Ethernet frame type is recorded, and regenerating the augmented Ethernet frame; and transmitting the regenerated augmented Ethernet frame to the destination ONU; and wherein during an upstream transmission to the OLT, the existing Ethernet frame is converted into an augmented Ethernet frame by inserting, by a source ONU, in the Ethernet type field in which an augmented Ethernet type is recorded and an LLID field in which the source ONU's own LLID is recorded.