Bandwidth-efficient PON system for broad-band access and local customer Internetworking

We present a new passive optical network (PON) architecture for broad-band access and local customer networking. It provides high bandwidth efficiency for delivering both PON and customer internetworking services. The architecture separates the local optical network from the PON system, thereby enhancing security, flexibility, and allowing the use of any media access control protocol. The local customer internetworking feature is demonstrated with insignificant penalty to the overall PON system performance.