Patent ID: 7684345

Claim:
A method comprising: receiving a plurality of data bursts from a terminal end; calculating an estimated data burst arrival time for at least some of the data bursts; measuring an actual data burst arrival time for at least some of the data bursts; calculating a difference between the estimated data burst arrival time and the actual data burst arrival time; determining whether the difference is greater than or equal to a difference threshold; storing the difference for a predetermined quantity of the data bursts; calculating a burst performance indicator value using the predetermined quantity of differences; determining whether the burst performance indicator value is greater than or equal to a performance indicator threshold; and sending an alarm if the burst performance indicator value is greater than or equal to the performance indicator threshold, wherein the method is implemented in an optical line terminal (OLT) in a gigabit passive optical network (GPON), and the terminal end is an optical network terminal (ONT).