Patent ID: 8731198

Claim:
A method comprising: determining, by an optical network device, that a length of a data packet exceeds a threshold length associated with a consecutive identical digit (CID) error, prior to encapsulating at least a portion of the data packet to form one or more passive optical network (PON) frames; in response to the determination that the length of the data packet exceeds the threshold length associated with the CID error, and without determining whether the packet will result in the CID error, fragmenting, by the optical network device, the data packet to form at least two sub-packets, so that none of the at least two sub-packets has a length exceeding the threshold length associated with the CID error; encapsulating, by the optical network device, at least a portion of the at least two sub-packets to form the one or more PON frames; applying, by the optical network device, a scrambling polynomial to at least a portion of the one or more PON frames to form one or more corresponding scrambled PON frames; and transmitting, by the optical network device, the one or more scrambled PON frames.