A simulation study of the IPACT Protocol for Ethernet Passive Optical Networks

In this paper a particular passive optical network based on the Ethernet framing is investigated considering a typical tree-based topology. User stations are managed for upstream data transmissions by means of a polling algorithm which has also to support a dynamic bandwidth management. Here the Interleaved polling with adaptive cycle time (IPACT) algorithm is investigated and evaluated through simulation, exploiting the ns simulation tool. Different scheduling disciplines which the IPACT may employ are evaluated in terms of bandwidth distribution, cycle times and queue lengths.