Patent ID: 7483632

Claim:
An apparatus for supporting service of quality (QoS) in an Ethernet passive optical network (E-PON) comprising: a plurality of subscriber termination systems at different remote places connected to the E-PON, each of the subscriber termination systems to store a mapping between a media access control (MAC) address and a corresponding port number of respective subscriber termination systems; and a service provider termination system which is connected to the plurality of subscriber termination systems through an optical distribution network, and allocates Internet protocol (IP) addresses according to subscriber classes based on bandwidth and subscriber class information of respective ports of each of the plurality of subscriber termination systems, wherein the service provider termination system maps the bandwidth and subscriber class information to the corresponding port number, the service provider termination system to obtain the corresponding port number of a request for an IP address by sending the MAC address in the request to the subscriber termination systems.