9
NEXT-GENERATION ETHERNET PASSIVE OPTICAL NETWORKS: 10G-EPON
1G-EPON, which is part of IEEE 802.3-2008 [1–3], is considered to have sufficient capacity for the next few years [4], provided that current bandwidth demand growth is maintained [5, 6]. Proprietary nature of higher-speed EPON solutions [7] meant that there was a limited supplier base and restricted interoperability between system integrators, which initially caused some concerns about deployment of such systems. This is what the market situation was at the time of 10G-EPON Call for Interest, presented during one of the IEEE plenary meetings in 2006 [8]. However, recent adoption of 2G-EPON specifications by CCSA (http://www.ccsa.org.cn/english) indicates a growing popularity of this solution at least on the Chinese market.
Taking into consideration that more than 30 million active ports of 1G-EPON have already been deployed up to date (2010), 10G-EPON seems like a natural step in the evolution toward more multimedia-rich, bandwidth-intensive applications of the future, where high-definition, distributed contents and file sharing as well as networked hardware play increasingly important roles. Given the successful history of IEEE equipment and a number of identified market applications, 10G-EPON will certainly enjoy deployment scales beyond anything that competitive PON architectures have ever seen. Providing 10 times more raw bandwidth than current 1G-EPON (approximately 8.9 ...
