Patent ID: 7792107

Claim:
A center-side terminal of an optical network, said center-side terminal connectable to a plurality of subscriber-side terminals via a passive optical splitter, comprising: a subscriber processing storing section adapted to store a relationship between subscriber numbers regarding said subscriber-side terminals and contents of the subscriber processing storing section allocated thereto; a processing section adapted to perform a processing upon a packet received from said subscriber-side terminals or to be transmitted thereto, said processing being determined in accordance with the relationship stored in said subscriber processing storing section using one of said subscriber numbers regarding said packet; a fixed logical link identifier storing section adapted to store a relationship between said subscriber numbers and fixed logical link identifiers allocated thereto, said fixed logical link identifiers being fixed with respect to communication terminals connected to said subscribe-side terminals; a fixed/floating logical link identifier storing section adapted to store a relationship between said fixed logical link identifiers and floating logical link identifiers allocated thereto, said floating logical identifiers being included in said packet when said packet is transmitted between said center-side terminal and said subscriber-side terminals; a packet receiving section adapted to receive a packet from said subscriber-side terminals; and a floating logical link identifier-to-fixed logical link identifier converting section adapted to extract a floating logical link identifier of said received packet and convert said extracted floating logical link identifier to a fixed logical link identifier in accordance with the relationship stored in said fixed/floating logical link identifier storing section; a fixed logical link identifier removing section adapted to read a subscriber number from the relationship stored in said fixed logical link identifier storing section using said converted fixed logical link identifier, and remove said converted fixed logical link from said received packet, said processing section determining a processing in accordance with the relationship stored in said subscriber processing storing section using said read subscriber number and performing said determined processing upon said received packet; wherein the subscriber numbers are not a MAC address of the communication terminals connected to the subscriber-side terminals.