Wayside user communications over optical supervisory channel

A wayside Ethernet communications system is presented for use with an optical network. The wayside Ethernet communication system includes a first and second optical network element connected to the optical network. The first optical network element having is adapted to map the Ethernet frames into at least one optical network frame and operable to transmit the optical network frames over an optical supervisory channel of the optical network. The second optical network element is adapted to receive the optical network frames over the optical supervisory channel of the optical network and to extract the Ethernet frames from the optical network frames.