Systems and methods for providing route redundancy in networking systems

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-12574667-B2
Application number	US-202519184864-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Apr 21, 2025
Priority date	Aug 12, 2024
Publication date	Mar 10, 2026
Grant date	Mar 10, 2026

Abstract

Techniques for providing route redundancy for services at a service location of a PON include obtaining indications of a service location of the PON and a set of required services for the location; and detecting, based on geospatial locations and interconnections of optical components of the PON, that two or more physical polyline routes (each configured to support the set of required services at the service location) include different elements, e.g., different on-ramp facilities, network serving equipment, physical polyline route segments connecting to a common component of each of the two or more routes, or serving facilities of one or more providers. The detected two or more routes may be configured to be a set of redundant physical polyline routes for providing the required services to the location. One or more services may be caused to be delivered to the location via the configured set of redundant physical polyline routes.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1 . A passive optical network (PON) for providing route redundancy for a set of required services at a service location of the PON, the PON comprising:
a last mile termination unit (LMTU) disposed at the service location; and a plurality of optical components optically interconnected via a plurality of optical fibers, each optical component storing a respective configuration indicative of an association between the LMTU and two or more redundant physical polyline routes for providing the set of required services to the LMTU via the PON, the two or more redundant physical polyline routes including at least one of:
different respective on-ramp facilities of the PON,
different respective optical line terminals (OLTs) of the PON,
different respective physical polyline route segments, of the PON, which are optically connected to a specific primary optical fiber bundle that is included in each of the two or more physical polyline routes, or
different respective provider serving facilities, the respective provider serving facilities including at least one of: a serving office of the service provider or an external network provider facility that is provided by an external network service provider other than the service provider and communicatively connected to the PON,
wherein each optical component, included in the two or more redundant physical polyline routes, is configured to receive an indication of a respective at least a portion of the stored association between the LMTU and the two or more redundant physical polyline routes, thereby configuring the each optical component to provide the set of required services to the LMTU.

2 . The PON of claim 1 , wherein each physical polyline route of the two or more redundant physical polyline routes provides a different type of redundancy for the service location, the different types of redundancy including one or more of: service provider redundancy or external service provider facility redundancy.

3 . The PON of claim 2 , wherein the different types of redundancy further include one or more of: serving office redundancy, redundancy of optical segments connected to the specific primary optical bundle, onramp redundancy, or overall route redundancy.

4 . The PON of claim 1 , wherein the two or more redundant physical polyline routes are selected from among a plurality of candidate physical polyline routes based on respective capabilities of the plurality of candidate physical polyline routes to support the set of required services.

5 . The PON of claim 4 , wherein the two or more redundant physical polyline routes are selected from among the plurality of candidate physical polyline routes further based on respective capabilities of the plurality of candidate physical polyline routes for supporting performance requirements of the set of required services.

6 . The PON of claim 5 , wherein the two or more redundant physical polyline routes are selected further based on at least one of: respective types of redundancy; respective available bandwidths, capacities, and/or congestion of the two or more redundant physical polyline routes; predicted bandwidths, capacities, and/or congestion of the two or more redundant physical polyline routes; respective total number of elements of the two or more redundant physical polyline routes; respective total number of types of elements of the two or more redundant physical polyline routes; respective geo-spatial locations of the two or more redundant physical polyline routes; or an indicated redundancy criterion.

7 . The PON of claim 1 , wherein the two or more redundant physical polyline routes include at least one external network provider facility.

8 . The PON of claim 1 , wherein a first physical polyline route of the two or more redundant physical polyline routes is configured as a primary route, and a second physical polyline route of the two or more redundant physical polyline routes is configured as a secondary route.

9 . PON of claim 8 , wherein at least one service of the set of required services is delivered to the LMTU via the secondary route responsive to a failure or degradation of an optical component or an optical fiber of the primary route.

10 . The PON of claim 8 , wherein at least one service of the set of required services is delivered to the LMTU via the secondary route responsive to a planned maintenance or diagnostic of one or more optical components or optical fibers of the primary route.

11 . The PON of claim 8 , wherein at least one service of the set of required services is delivered to the LMTU via the secondary route responsive to a detected or predicted state of delivery of services to the service location.

12 . The PON of claim 1 , wherein the each optical component routes one or more services of the set of required services to the LMTU based on the stored respective configuration.

13 . The PON of claim 12 , wherein the each optical component re-routes the one or more services of the set of required services to the LMTU based on the stored respective configuration and responsive to at least one of: the each optical component detecting a failure or degradation within a servicing polyline route, or a maintenance or diagnostic activity.

14 . The PON of claim 1 , further comprising a data store storing an indication of the association between the LMTU and the two or more redundant physical polyline routes, and wherein at least of an initiation of delivery, to the LMTU, of at least one service included in the set of required services to the LMTU or a re-routing of the delivery of the at least one service to the LMTU is based on the stored indication of the association.

15 . The PON of claim 14 , wherein:
an indication of a respective at least a portion of the stored association between the LMTU and the two or more redundant physical polyline routes is provided by one or more servers of the PON to the each optical component; and the respective configuration stored at the each optical component is based on the respective at least the portion of the stored association provided by the one or more servers.

16 . A system for providing route redundancy for a set of required services at a service location of a passive optical network (PON), the system comprising:
one or more processors; and one or more memories storing a set of computer-executable instructions that, when executed by the one or more processors, cause the system to:
store, in a data store of the PON, an indication of an association between a last mile termination unit (LMTU) disposed at the service location and two or more redundant physical polyline routes for delivering a set of required services to the LMTU via the PON, the two or more redundant physical polyline routes including at least one of:
different respective on-ramp facilities of the PON,
different respective optical line terminals (OLTs) of the PON,
different respective physical polyline route segments, of the PON, which are optically connected to a specific primary optical fiber bundle that is included in each of the two or more physical polyline routes, or
different respective provider serving facilities, the respective provider serving facilities including at least one of: a serving office of the service provider or an external network provider facility that is provided by an external network service provider other than the service provider and communicatively connected to the PON; and

provide, to each optical component included in the two or more redundant physical polyline routes, an indication of a respective at least a

Assignees

• Frontier Communications Holdings Llc

Inventors

• Papke Jeremy S
• Bennett Ryan C

Classifications

• H04Q2011/0073

  Provisions for forwarding or routing, e.g. lookup tables · CPC title

• H04Q2011/0081

  Fault tolerance; Redundancy; Recovery; Reconfigurability · CPC title

• H04Q11/0067 Primary

  Provisions for optical access or distribution networks, e.g. Gigabit Ethernet Passive Optical Network (GE-PON), ATM-based Passive Optical Network (A-PON), PON-Ring · CPC title