swPON: Enabling High-Performance PON Softwarization with Commodity Ethernet Hardware
Key: SFH+26
Author: Fridolin Siegmund, Philip Jonas Franz, Matthias Hollick, Ralf Kundel
Date: May 2026
Kind: In proceedings
Publisher: IEEE
Book title: Proceedings of IEEE Conference on Network Operations and Management Symposium 2026
Abstract: Passive Optical Networks (PONs) are deployed to deliver high-speed networking to both residential and business customers. However, due to the usage of shared-medium technology, specialized PON hardware is required. PON softwarization aims to decouple PON functionality from specialized hardware, moving execution to general-purpose hardware in commercial servers. Softwarizing the lower PON layers is increasingly computationally expensive the further it moves towards the physical layer. We explore a different route by investigating Ethernet as a suitable replacement candidate on the MAC layer, utilizing widely deployed Ethernet hardware. In our proposed architecture, the Ethernet PHY and MAC layers build the foundation with a softwarized PON MAC on top. While current Ethernet standards are not capable of supporting a physical PON system, the prototypical softwarized MAC demonstrates that software-based packet processing and scheduling in combination with Ethernet hardware is able to support a high-performance PON system. Our implementation provisions and manages connected subscriber instances with a custom in-band control plane protocol. The evaluation results show that our softwarized PON MAC can reach total upstream throughput exceeding 23 Gbit/s for two subscribers on a 25 Gbit/s link. Additionally, the limitations of softwarization are explored by optimizing the complex system, e.g., by varying operating frequencies.
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