Patent ID: 7301970

Claim:
A multi-point control protocol processing apparatus over an Ethernet Passive Optical Network (PON) including an Optical Line Termination (OLT) and an Optical Network Unit (ONU), the apparatus comprising: a CPU interface unit which connects to an external CPU, and receives and sends data from/to the external CPU; static gate allocation (SGA) table memory which stores a plurality of static grant allocation information entries; a round trip time (RTT) table memory which stores RTT values for each logical link identification (LLID); a memory arbitration control unit which controls access of the SGA table memory and RTT table memory; a static grant generation unit which generates static grant frames for each (LLID) according to static grant generation information from the SGA table memory which was set by the CPU; a dynamic grant generation unit which reads grant request information, for data transmission process, from a report queue and generates dynamic grant frames according to LLID and grant request information; a static grant queue which stores the static grant frames; a dynamic grant queue which stores the dynamic grant frames; a sending message queue which stores sending message frames from the CPU; a sending multiplexing unit which receives and schedules sending requirement signals transmitted from an external PON bridge, the static grant queue, the dynamic grant queue and the sending message queue, wherein one signal is selected, and contents of a corresponding queue are output; a time setting unit which sets start time information of any passing grant frames, and transfers an Ethernet frame, output from the sending multiplexing unit, to a media access control (MAC) sending unit; a receiving demultiplexing unit which demultiplexes an Ethernet frame received from a MAC receiving unit; a report queue which stores report information received from the receiving demultiplexing unit; and a received message queue which stores Ethernet frames to be transferred from the receiving demultiplexing unit to the CPU.