Patent ID: 7826378

Claim:
A method for testing a passive optical network (PON) having an Optical Line Terminal (OLT) and a plurality of Optical Network Terminators (ONTs), comprising: establishing a data communication tunnel in a data network between the OLT and a test host operating on the data network; establishing a first data communication path in the PON between the OLT and a logical test port of an ONT, the logical test port not associated with any physical user port of the ONT; establishing a second data communication path in the PON between the OLT and a logical user port of the ONT, the logical user port associated with a physical user port of the ONT; establishing a third data communication path in the ONT between the logical test port and the logical user port; and operating the test host to transmit and receive test data via a loopback test path comprising the data communication tunnel and the first, second and third data communication paths.