A system and method are disclosed for transporting deterministic traffic in a gigabit passive optical network. A system that incorporates teachings of the present disclosure may include, for example, an Optical Line Termination (OLT) for exchanging data traffic in a Gigabit Passive Optical Network (GPON) having a controller programmed to generate a timeslot schedule for transport of a desired bandwidth of constant bit rate (CBR) data traffic by selecting one or more timeslots from periodic frame clusters operating according to a GPON Transmission Convergence (GTC) protocol. Additional embodiments are disclosed.

Embodiments of the invention disclose a communication method which includes: receiving, by the optical network unit (ONU) by using the first port or the second port, a wavelength switching request message delivered by the optical line terminal (OLT), where the wavelength switching request message carries second wavelength channel information and port information that is of the second port; switching, by the ONU, an operating wavelength channel of an optical module connected to the second port from a first wavelength channel to a second wavelength channel corresponding to the second wavelength channel information; and sending, by the ONU, a wavelength switching complete message to the OLT by using the first port. According to the communication method provided in embodiments of the present invention, quick wavelength switching is performed based on the second port, so that a service is not interrupted in a wavelength switching process, and user experience is better.

A network switch comprises a plurality of optical physical transport layer resources and a control plane management engine capable of receiving, via a request over a network interface, at least one control plane provisioning policy that maps at least one upper layer resource to at least some of the optical physical transport layer resources. The control plane management engine provisions at least some of the optical physical transport layer resources for use by at least one virtual control plane, which operates according to rules of the control plane provisioning policy. The control plane management engine is configured to manage network traffic among the at least some optical physical transport layer resources and external networking nodes according to the at least one virtual control plane.

A wet plant manager (WPM) platform is disclosed in accordance with an embodiment of the present disclosure, and supports management of Smart Undersea Network Elements (SUNEs) by providing an abstracted view of the same to higher level network management functions within an optical communication system. The optical communication system can include an optical cable system extending between two or more cable landing stations (CLSs). Each CLS may execute a respective instance of a WPM platform service, with the collective WPM platform performing self-coordination such that only one instance of a WPM service is active at any given time. The active WPM service supports a plurality of network topologies architected around SUNEs and bridges them such that requests to communicate with a particular SUNE get handled in a transparent manner without the requesters specific knowledge of which command/response (CR) telemetry path was utilized to satisfy the request.

A data communication system for transmitting packets over one or more optical fibers includes a transponder with a number of digital signal processors that transmit data packets on different optical channels. The transponder includes a switch that receives a data packet on an input and selects one of the digital signal processors to transmit the packet based on quality metrics for the different optical channels and/or information included in an OSI header for the data packet.

Systems and methods for coordinating an optical layer and a packet layer in a network, include a Software Defined Networking (SDN) Internet Protocol (IP) application configured to implement a closed loop for analytics, recommendations, provisioning, and monitoring, of a plurality of routers in the packet layer; and a variable capacity application configured to determine optical path viability, compute excess optical margin, and recommend and cause capacity upgrades and downgrades, by communicating with a plurality of network elements in the optical layer, wherein the SDN IP application and the variable capacity application coordinate activity therebetween based on conditions in the network. The activity is coordinated based on underlying capacity changes in the optical layer and workload changes in the packet layer.

This application relates to a method for managing traffic flow in a passive optical network (PON) which connects an optical line terminal (OLT) to a plurality of optical network units (ONUs) via an optical distribution network (ODN). The method may comprise obtaining one or more optimization parameters for a target state of the PON. The method may also comprise determining for one or more or each of the ONUs, a respective modulation scheme for communicating data between the OLT and that ONU. The method may further comprise determining a respective power distribution ratio for a distributive element of the ODN for one or more of the ONUs based on the determined modulation scheme and the one or more optimization parameters. Specifically, the distributive element may have a first port and a plurality of second ports. In particular, the first port may be associated with signal transmission between the OLT and the ODN, and each second port may be associated with signal transmission between the ODN and a respective ONU or a respective group of ONUs. Besides, each of the second ports of the distributive element may be associated with a power distribution ratio of optical power at that second port to optical power at the first port of the distributive element. Furthermore, the method may comprise adjusting a respective branch power for the one or more of the ONUs based on the determined power distribution ratio for communicating data between the OLT and the one or more of the ONUs.

Various example embodiments for supporting transport of data packets over optical fiber networks are presented herein. Various example embodiments for supporting transport of data packets over optical fiber networks may be configured to support transport of data packets over optical fiber networks based on mapping of data packets onto wavelength channels based on quality of service (QoS) mapping. Various example embodiments for supporting transport of data packets over optical fiber networks based on mapping of data packets onto wavelength channels based on QoS mapping may be configured to support transport of data packets over optical fiber networks based on mapping of data packets onto wavelength channels based on QoS mapping information that includes mappings of data packet QoS levels to wavelength channel QoS levels.

A system and method are disclosed for transporting deterministic traffic in a gigabit passive optical network. A system that incorporates teachings of the present disclosure may include, for example, an Optical Line Termination (OLT) for exchanging data traffic in a Gigabit Passive Optical Network (GPON) having a controller programmed to generate a timeslot schedule for transport of a desired bandwidth of constant bit rate (CBR) data traffic by selecting one or more timeslots from periodic frame clusters operating according to a GPON Transmission Convergence (GTC) protocol. Additional embodiments are disclosed.

Apparatus and methods are provided for application layer optimization in a modern data network. The optimization incorporates variable rate transmission across one or more optical data channels. Data throughput is maximized by enabling quality of service profiles on a per transmission channel basis. According to one aspect, a system is provided in which the application layer is aware of and controls the underlying transmission rate and quality of the transmission. This enables the system to fully utilize the transmission capacity of the channel. The application layer may map different applications to different transmission classes of service. The services can be classified based on data throughput rate, guaranteed error rates, latency and cost, among other criteria. This provides flexibility to the application layer to map some loss tolerant applications to a lower cost (per bit) transmission class.