Patent ID: 8102851

Claim:
A method of signaling end-of-transmission on a data communications link of a point to multipoint (P2MP) network, wherein the data communications link uses scrambling, the method comprising the steps of: a) by a transmitting node of the network, appending an end of burst delimiter (EBD) binary sequence to scrambled burst data; b) transmitting the scrambled burst data and the EBD over the data communications link to a headend of the network; by the headend: c) detecting the scrambled burst data; d) synchronizing a headend receiver to the scrambled burst data; e) checking if the scrambled burst data is unicast interval; and f) if unicast interval, comparing a current time to an end time of a transmission slot: (i) if the end time is reached, resetting the headend; and (ii) while the current time is less than the end time, resetting the headend based on comparing received data to the EBD; wherein the communication link is an upstream channel of the P2MP network operated in a burst mode, wherein the P2MP network is an Ethernet passive optical network (EPON), wherein the transmitting node is an optical network unit (ONU) and wherein the headend is an optical line terminal (OLT).