PON standards

PON comes in two families — the ITU-T G-series (GPON and its successors) and the IEEE EPON series. They differ in rates, framing and wavelength plans.

ITU-T family

IEEE family

• EPON (802.3ah) — 1G symmetric, Ethernet framing.
• 10G-EPON (802.3av) — 10G downstream, 1G or 10G upstream.

Wavelengths and coexistence

Each standard defines its own downstream/upstream wavelengths so that newer PONs can share the same fibre plant as older ones through coexistence elements. NG-PON2 goes further with tunable ONU optics that pick a wavelength pair.

Because the wavelength plan is part of the standard, confirming a module's wavelength matters — CodingBox surfaces it from the module memory.