Patent ID: 8855491

Claim:
A method for performing a protection in a passive optical network (PON), comprising: forming a protection maintenance link between an active optical line terminal (OLT) and a standby OLT; forming a synchronization link between the active OLT and the standby OLT; computing a base differential distance value; continuously measuring round trip time (RTT) values by the active OLT using the protection maintenance link; periodically sending at least RTT values calculated by the active OLT to the standby OLT over the synchronization link; and computing, by the standby OLT, a new RTT value based on at least an RTT value measured by the active OLT and a standby differential distance value, when a switch-over action is triggered, thereby allowing the standby OLT to serve optical network units (ONUs) in the PON without performing a ranging process.