Patent ID: 8254386

Claim:
A method for implementing multicast via a passive optical network (PON), comprising: receiving, at a layer 3 device upstream of an Optical Line Terminal (OLT) device, Internet group multicast protocol (IGMP) messages from a customer device via the OLT device; identifying, by the layer 3 device, multicast information associated with the IGMP messages, wherein the multicast information includes at least multicast group information and customer identification information; transmitting the identified multicast information by the layer 3 device to the OLT device; storing, by the OLT device, the multicast information in a multicast state table; receiving, at the OLT device, downstream layer 2 traffic; extracting, by the OLT device, multicast addressing information from the layer 2 traffic; determining, by the OLT device, whether the multicast addressing information matches the multicast group information stored in the multicast state table; and forwarding, by the OLT device, the layer 2 traffic on at least one PON interface corresponding to the customer identification information that is associated with the stored multicast group information when the multicast addressing information matches the multicast group information stored in the multicast state table.