Patent ID: 8433194

Claim:
A communications network comprising: first and second optical line terminals; and one or more optical network terminals wherein: the first optical line terminal has a first network connection to the one or more optical network terminals and the second optical line terminal has a second network connection to the one or more optical network terminals; a first virtual LAN connection is made to each of the one or more optical network terminals via the first network connection; and a second virtual LAN connection is made to each of the one or more optical network terminals via the second network connection; the communications network is configured so that: the first network connection and the second network connection are both routed to the one or more optical network terminals via shared network infrastructure; the first network connection is an active connection used to transmit data to and/or receive data from the one or more optical network terminals; the second network connection is a standby connection; and a decision is made to switch from the active first network connection to the standby second network connection for one or more of the optical network terminals, the decision being made in response to network performance indicators associated with the first virtual LAN connection.