Service Management and Connection Identification in Shared Medium Access Networks

Passive Optical Networks employing the ATM principle (ATM PONs) are considered the best candidate for providing B-ISDN services with low cost to small business and residential customers. Simplicity and economical reasons impose several burdens in the ATM PON design. The lack of signalling capability in a Virtual Path (VP)-based operation chosen for the ATM PON necessitates a flexible Virtual Path Identifier (VPI) allocation scheme for supporting basic functions like routing and addressing. This VPI allocation scheme should be kept transparent for the standardized ATM interfaces which leads to the introduction of a VPI translation function at the entrance and exit of the ATM PON. This in turn calls for the design of a new (ATM PON) - (B-ISDN - Local Exchange (LEX)) fast interaction protocol which should serve the ATM PON specific requirements and also be general enough to be used with other PONs.