Patent ID: 8340518

Claim:
A station-side apparatus in a PON (Passive Optical Network) system comprising: an allocation request receiving unit operative to receive, from each of a plurality of home-side apparatuses, each adaptable for different maximum communication speeds, a bandwidth allocation request for data transmission in the upstream direction; an allocation execution unit operative to allocate, to each of the plurality of home-side apparatuses, a time slot for transmitting data from the home-side apparatus in a time-multiplexed manner, whose length is determined in accordance with any one of a plurality of types of allocation rules; an allocation result notification unit operative to notify each of the home-side apparatuses of information regarding an allocated time slot; and an allocation rule switching unit operative to switch a current allocation rule to another allocation rule when a predetermined switching condition is satisfied, wherein the plurality of types of allocation rules includes a first allocation rule by which a time slot of the same length is allocated to each of the home-side apparatuses and a second allocation rule by which a time slot, whose length is determined in accordance with the maximum communication speed of each of the home-side apparatuses so that the amount of data transmitted from each of the home-side apparatuses in a predetermined unit time becomes the same, is allocated to each of the home-side apparatuses.