SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR SCHEDULING BUSINESS AND RESIDENTIAL SERVICES IN OPTICAL NETWORKS

A passive optical network (PON) has an optical line termination (OLT) that terminates an optical fiber servicing a plurality of optical network units (ONUs). Each ONU has one or more traffic containers (TCONTs) addressable by the OLT. The PON dynamic bandwidth allocation (DBA) implements a scheduling hierarchy, including several scheduling layers, such that disjoint sets of TCONTs can be grouped together, then disjoint sets of groups can be grouped, and so on. In such hierarchy, the residential traffic can be grouped separately from the business traffic. Further, within either the residential or business group, traffic may be grouped to define scheduling layers ("sub-groups") within the residential or business group. Scheduling in one group or sub-group is performed independently of the scheduling in other groups or sub-groups, subject to the available bandwidth for each group. The scheduling may be controlled to allow the residential services to be oversubscribed while still ensuring compliance of service level performance metrics for the business services.