Broadband fiber access: A fiber-to-the-customer access architecture

The proliferation of high-bandwidth applications such as high-speed Interne t access and telecommuting has created among network providers a growing in terest in upgrading their networks to deliver broadband services to homes a nd small businesses. This paper describes broadband fiber access (BFA) a fi ber-to-the-customer access architecture based on Lucent Technologies' broad band AnyMedia(TM) interface platform (AIP). The BFA architecture provides a synchronous transfer mode (ATM) connection to customer premises equipment ( CPE) and supports full quality-of-service (QoS) and traffic management func tions defined by the ATM Forum; The BFA line card, or application pack (AP) is designed to support the concentration of traffic from CPE at the OC-3c/ STM-1 rate (155.52 Mb/s). It supports the use of single-fiber drop to CPE u sing bidirectional coarse wavelength division multiplexing (CWDM). A hardwa re-based flow-control mechanism, which is applied to low-priority traffic o riginated from the CPE, allows for fast response to congestion at the feede r multiplexer. This fast response to congestion allows fair and efficient u tilization of the feeder bandwidth.