Patent ID: 7020157

Claim:
A passive optical network comprising: a first group of network nodes; a second group of network nodes; a first interface module that transmits information to the first group of nodes via a first optical fiber link; a second interface module that transmits information to the second group of nodes via a second optical fiber link; a first Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) relay agent associated with the first interface module, that generates DHCP proxy requests for the first group of network nodes; a second DHCP relay agent, associated with the second interface module, that generates DHCP proxy requests for the second group of network nodes; and a DHCP server that assigns IP addresses to the network nodes in the first and second groups in response to the DHCP proxy requests generated by the first and second DHCP relay agents, wherein at least some of the IP addresses assigned to the network nodes in the first group and at least some of the IP addresses assigned to the network nodes in the second group are within a common subnet scope.