Patent ID: 8526815

Claim:
A method of dynamic bandwidth allocation in a passive optical network (PON) communications system, the PON communications system including a plurality of optical line terminal (OLT) port controllers, wherein each OLT port controller controls at least one respective optical networking terminal (ONT), and wherein data is forwarded by the OLT port controllers towards a common service network interface (SNI), the method comprising the steps of: (a) generating by each of the plurality of OLT port controllers a respective broadcast occupancy report (BOR); (b) transmitting from each of the plurality of OLT port controllers the respective BORs to the plurality of OLT port controllers; (c) receiving the respective BORs at each of the plurality of OLT port controllers; and (d) dynamically assigning bandwidth at each of the plurality of OLT port controllers to each of the controlled ONTs for transmission from each of the controlled ONTs toward the common SNI, the assigned bandwidth based on the respective BORs that the OLT port controllers receive, the assigned bandwidth dynamically controlling aggregated bandwidth toward the common SNI.