A Novel Unique Parameter for Increasing of Security in GPON Networks

Passive optical networks are widely used because of their sufficient bandwidth and low price of individual elements. Based on the European Commission, The Czech Republic ISPs have to ensure 30 Mbit/s (in existing networks) and 100 Mbit/s (in new constructed networks) for each customer in selected areas till 2020. Nowadays, the GPON standard is dominating in the Europe due to its low price and maturity. In general, the passive optical networks are based on P2MP (Point to Multipoint) physical topology. Therefore each end unit receives data meant for all units. To mitigate this, the standard defines an encryption method (authentication and key exchange phase) but the key exchange phase relies only on a single unique parameter (serial number of an end unit). A new unique parameter for the key exchange phase is proposed. No modification of the transmission convergence layer in GPON is considered. A measuring scheme for determining of accuracy of our new unique parameter, called Tprop, is also proposed.