FEC based PON Optimization

A method, comprising:

• broadcasting, by an OLT, a message over an optical network;
• receiving, by the OLT and from an ONU, a response to the message;
• transmitting, by the OLT and to the ONU, activation parameters specifying that the OLT supports multiple different FEC code lengths when FEC is activated;
• receiving, by the OLT and from the ONU, a set of FEC code lengths supported by the ONU and performance measures collected by the ONU;
• selecting, by the OLT and from among the FEC code lengths supported by the ONU, one or more appropriate FEC code lengths for communications between the ONU and the OLT based on the performance measures collected by the ONU and performance measures collected by the OLT;
• and
• configuring, by the OLT, the ONU to utilize the appropriate FEC code length.

A non-transitory computer storage medium storing instructions that when executed by one or more data processing apparatus cause the one or more data processing apparatus to perform operations comprising:

• broadcasting a message over an optical network;
• receiving, from an Optical Network Unit (“ONU”), a response to the message;
• transmitting, to the ONU, activation parameters specifying that the OLT supports multiple different Forward Error Correction (“FEC”) code lengths when FEC is activated;
• receiving, from the ONU, a set of FEC code lengths supported by the ONU and performance measures collected by the ONU;
• selecting, from among the FEC code lengths supported by the ONU, one or more appropriate FEC code lengths for communications between the ONU and the OLT based on the performance measures collected by the ONU and performance measures collected by the OLT;
• and
• configuring the ONU to utilize the appropriate FEC code length.