Patent ID: 8619590

Claim:
A method of transmitting an Operations, Administration and Maintenance (OAM) message in a Passive Optical Network (PON) system, the method comprising: transmitting a create OAM message to an Optical Network Unit (ONU); and receiving a response OAM message from the ONU, wherein the create OAM message comprises a message identifier (ID) field, a message contents length field, and a message contents field that are associated with at least one Ethernet switch control creation message, the Ethernet switch control creation message capable of being at least one of a create Gigabit-capable Passive Optical Network Encapsulation Method (GEM) Connection Termination Point (CTP) message, a create Gigabit-capable encapsulation method adaption layer (GAL) Ethernet message, and a create Media Access Control (MAC) bridge service message, and wherein the response OAM message comprises a message ID field, a message contents length field, and a message contents field that are associated with at least one Ethernet switch control response message.