Building Multicast Controller for Carrier-grade IPTV Service over Ethernet Passive Optical Network

Ethernet passive optical network (EPON) is an emerging high-speed access network technology that can provide an ideal transmission platform for high- bandwidth applications such as IPTV (internet protocol television). To deploy the carrier-grade IPTV service, especially HDTV (high definition TV), it is very essential to construct a controllable multicast architecture for IPTV service over EPON. In this paper, we present a multicast control solution over EPON system to satisfy the demand of the service management and control from the service providers. Furthermore, we successfully develop a multicast controller to perform the multicast control function including managing the eligibility of the subscribers and controlling the delivery of the multicast channels. The evaluation results demonstrate that the multicast controller can not only provide high processing performance but also improve the operation and management ability for the service providers greatly.