22 April 2010, Shanghai, China– Interoperability of symmetric 10G-EPON products was demonstrated successfully in Shanghai, China last week during a showcase hosted by ZTE Corporation. The showcase was open to participants of the IEEE 1904.1 Working Group meeting in Shanghai.

Interoperability among products was successfully demonstrated by four vendors: Broadcom; PMC-Sierra; Opulan and ZTE. Each vendor supplied an OLT and a variety of ONUs (supporting both 1G-EPON and symmetric 10G-EPON), connected in a multi-vendor configuration to demonstrate complete interoperability.

System performance was examined for a number of realistic and challenging test configurations that reflected the specific requirements of major service providers. These tests included physical-layer connectivity, MAC-layer connectivity, MPCP discovery, dynamic bandwidth allocation, service setup, security and authentication, and connection management.

Coexistence of 1G-EPON and 10G-EPON on the same network also was demonstrated successfully, thus validating a critical feature for operators with large volumes of 1G-EPON deployed in their networks. 10G-EPON’s robust and cost-effective coexistence solution protects network operators’ existing 1G-EPON deployments and allows a graceful, gradual migration to higher data rates on an as-needed basis.

Rapid development of 10G-EPON products was possible primarily because of the incremental development strategy adopted during the work of IEEE 802.3av Task Force, where existing specifications of 1G-EPON were leveraged to the greatest extent possible. This is especially critical in terms of the EPON management, based on extensions to IEEE Std 802.3 Clause 57 OAM, used in mass deployment 1G-EPON systems and now only updated to provide support for 10G-EPON.

This 10G-EPON interoperability event is the world’s first interoperability showcase of a next-generation, symmetric, 10 Gb/s PON, and represents a milestone in the introduction of symmetric technology in the access network. High bandwidth, symmetric access solutions are needed urgently to meet the dramatic increase in bandwidth demand from wireless backhaul and other bandwidth-intensive applications.

Participants of the IEEE 1904.1 Working Group (SIEPON, www.siepon.org) meeting had a chance to participate in this event. This new IEEE Communication Society project is focused on developing service-layer interoperability specifications, which incorporate requirements from operators around the world. SIEPON is addressing various aspects of EPON interoperability, including physical-layer requirements, protection switching, authentication, security, management, and performance monitoring.