In a hybrid PON xDSL access network, multiple customer premise equipment (CPE) nodes connect over individual digital subscriber lines (DSLs) to a drop-point device. The drop-point device, which is typically reverse powered from the customer, is co-located with an optical network unit (ONU) of the passive optical network (PON). We demonstrate that the drop-point experiences very high buffer occupancies when no flow control or standard Ethernet PAUSE frame flow control is employed. In order to reduce the buffer occupancies in the drop-point, we introduce two gated flow control protocols that extend the polling-based PON medium access control to the DSL segments between the CPEs and the ONUs. We analyze the timing of the gated flow control mechanisms to specify the latest possible time instant when CPEs can start the DSL upstream transmissions so that the ONU can forward the upstream transmissions at the full PON upstream transmission bit rate. Through extensive simulations for a wide range of bursty traffic models, we find that the gated flow control mechanisms, specifically, the ONU and CPE grant sizing policies, enable effective control of the maximum drop-point buffer occupancies.
The coaxial copper cable deployed by cable companies represents another existing copper technology that can be used in conjunction with PONs to create a hybrid access network. Such a hybrid access network combining an Ethernet PON with an Ethernet over Coax (EoC) network was proposed in @cite_10 . The proposed network uses EPON protocols on the EoC segment in isolation from the EPON segment without any coordination between the segments. A similar network was examined in @cite_17 in terms of the blocking probability and delay for a video-on-demand service. None of these studies discussed the design of the drop-point device or explored DBA algorithms for these types of networks.
@cite_10 @cite_17
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We investigate the challenges in designing the network architecture for running EPON (Ethernet Passive Optical Network) Protocol over Coax, or EPoC in short. EPoC is the transparent extension of EPON over a cable operator's Hybrid Fiber-Coax (HFC) network, and uses a hybrid of optical and coaxial technologies to carry traffic to and from end-users and the Internet backbone. For managing and controlling such a hybrid network, a network operator will prefer to have a unified scheduling, management, and quality-of-service (QoS) environment that includes both the optical and coax portions of the network. This can be achieved by extending the EPON Medium Access Control (MAC) to run over the coax physical layer, to have a centralized end-to-end network control from the cable head-end to the end-users' premises. The use of the coax portion of the network is transparent to EPON protocol operation in the headend, as the same MAC runs over the entire network. In this article, we describe the architecture of EPoC, and outline how the EPON MAC Control, i.e., the EPON Multi-Point Control Protocol (MPCP) can be extended for designing an end-to-end Multi-Point MAC Control for EPoC. We explain the design of several MAC functions and their operation, including framing for coax, Ethernet frame fragmentation, generation of upstream and downstream Media Allocation Plans, and automatic discovery and registration of user equipment. With strong backing from both service operators and equipment vendors, EPoC is set to become a rapidly-evolving standard within the next few years, and the creation of the IEEE 802.3bn Task Force for EPoC is a major step in that direction. To improve the limitations of Ethernet over Coax (EoC). technology in the bidirectional reformation of the hybrid fiber-coaxial (HFC) network, this paper proposes the concept of Ethernet passive electronic network (EPEN) based on multi-point control protocol (MPCP) and the hybrid access scheme of Ethernet passive optical network (EPON) and EPEN. This paper describes the network architecture of EPEN, and introduces the implementation scheme and design of the EPEN system. At present, the project group has been working on the core technology research and key software and hardware design of the EPEN system, on which we have accomplished the hardware design and debugging, the embedded software coding and debugging, the EPEN network management protocol design and software coding. However, there is still a lot to do to achieve networking capability, management, security, quality of service (QoS) and some other functions.