Patent ID: 7792112

Claim:
A method for controlling multicast flow in passive optical network, comprising: providing a first multicast right control table and a second multicast right control table in an optical network terminal (ONT), the first multicast right control table being in an ONT-based control mode to indicate authorized multicast groups of the ONT, the second multicast right control table being in an ONT-port-based control mode to indicate mapping relationships between ONT ports and multicast groups; receiving, by the ONT, multicast data sent by an optical line terminal (OLT); determining whether the multicast data is authorized for transmission by searching the first multicast right control table in the ONT-based control mode; upon determining that the multicast data is authorized for transmission, determining whether the multicast data is authorized for transmission to a destination port by searching the second multicast right control table in the ONT-port-based control mode; and transmitting the multicast data to the destination port of the user side upon determining that the received multicast data is authorized for transmission to the destination port; otherwise, discarding the multicast data.