Patent ID: 8494364

Claim:
A system for controlling flow rate in an Ethernet Passive Optic Network (EPON), comprising: an optical network unit (ONU) coupled to an optical line terminal (OLT) via a passive optical splitter, wherein the ONU comprises one or more queues corresponding to one or more classes of services; a port located on the ONU and coupled to a switch, wherein the switch comprises a plurality of user-to-network interface (UNI) ports, and wherein the switch is configured to switch one or more upstream traffic flows belonging to the one or more classes of services from the plurality of UNI ports; and a flow control mechanism configured to set a flow rate of an upstream traffic flow originated from a UNI port on the switch, wherein the upstream traffic flow belongs to a class of service, and wherein the flow rate is set based on status of an ONU queue corresponding to the class of service of the upstream traffic flow.