Fault-tolerant distributed passive optical network bonding

1. A system comprising:

multiple optical line terminals (OLTs), including:

a first OLT that hosts a bonding engine;

additional OLTs that are connected to the first OLT, wherein:

the additional OLTs include a second OLT that hosts a second bonding engine and terminates a second PON;

the additional OLTs further include a third OLT that hosts a third bonding engine and terminates a third PON;

each OLT included in the additional OLTs comprises a transceiver; and

each transceiver is configured to transmit packets over a passive optical network (PON) on a corresponding wavelength that differs from wavelengths used by other OLTs among the additional OLTs; and

a communications interface that couples the additional OLTs to multiple optical network units (ONUs), wherein the first OLT includes one or more processors that cause the bonding engine to perform operations including:

selecting packet data for transmission over the PON;

identifying a transmission wavelength assigned to the packet data;

identifying, from among the additional OLTs, a particular OLT to transmit the packet data over the PON based on the corresponding wavelength of the particular OLT matching the identified transmission wavelength assigned to the packet;

formatting the packet data based on the particular OLT; and

transmitting the formatted packet data to the particular OLT for transmission over the communications interface.

2. The system of claim 1 , wherein the multiple ONUs include:

a first ONU that is incapable of bonding across multiple wavelengths and carries data of an unbonded XGEM in a physical port of the first OLT; and

a second ONU that is capable of bonding across multiple wavelengths and carries data of one or more bonded XGEMs (bXGEMs) in two or more physical ports of a second OLT of the additional OLTs.

3. The system of claim 2 , wherein the packet data includes a first set of packets to be transmitted to the first ONU and a second set of packets to be transmitted to the second ONU.

4. The system of claim 3 , wherein:

formatting the packet data includes formatting the first set of packets; and

transmitting the formatted packet data to the particular OLT for transmission over the communications interface includes transmitting the first set of formatted packets to the particular OLT for transmission to the first ONU over the communications interface.

5. The system of claim 4 , wherein formatting the first set of packets based on the particular OLT includes encapsulating the first set of packets based on the unbonded XGEM in two or more physical ports of the particular OLT.

6. The system of claim 3 , wherein:

the one or more processors cause the bonding engine to perform operations that further include identifying, from among the additional OLTs, the second OLT to transmit the second set of packets over the PON based on the corresponding wavelength of the second OLT matching a transmission wavelength assigned to the second set of packets;

formatting the packet data includes formatting the second set of packets based on the particular OLT; and

transmitting the formatted packet data to the particular OLT for transmission over the communications interface includes transmitting the second set of formatted packets to the second OLT for transmission to the second ONU over the communications interface.

7. The system of claim 6 , wherein formatting the second set of packets based on the particular OLT includes encapsulating the second set of packets based on the one or more bXGEMs in two or more physical ports of the second OLT.

8. The system of claim 1 , wherein the bonding engine operates as a link aggregation group (LAG) distribution processor that is configured to communicate with the multiple ONUs through unbonded XGEMs across multiple wavelengths.

9. The system of claim 2 , wherein the one or more processors cause the bonding engine to perform operations that further include:

performing joint dynamic bandwidth allocation across a first traffic load for the unbonded XGEM or LLID in a physical port of the particular OLT and a second traffic load for the one or more bXGEMs or bonded LLIDs in two or more physical ports of the second OLT;

generating a first bandwidth map for the first traffic load based on performing the joint dynamic bandwidth allocation across the first traffic load and the second traffic load; and

generating a second bandwidth map for the second traffic load based on performing the joint dynamic bandwidth allocation across the first traffic load and the second traffic load;

transmitting the first bandwidth map to the particular OLT; and

transmitting the second bandwidth map to the second OLT.

10. The system of claim 2 , wherein the additional OLTs include a second OLT that is configured to perform forward error correction (FEC) that encodes and decodes data for the physical port of the first OLT.

11. The system of claim 10 , wherein the second OLT is configured to perform operations that include:

encoding downstream data from the first OLT; and

transmitting the encoded downstream data to the multiple ONUs.

12. The system of claim 10 , wherein the second OLT is configured to perform operations that include:

decoding upstream data from the multiple ONUs; and

transmitting the decoded traffic load to the first OLT.

13. The system of claim 1 , wherein the one or more processors cause the bonding engine to perform operations that further include:

identifying a timebase of the first OLT;

identifying a respective timebase of each of the additional OLTs; and

synchronizing the timebases of the additional OLTs based on the timebase of the first OLT.

14. The system of claim 1 , wherein formatting the packet data includes:

identifying timestamp information for packets to be transmitted over the PON; and

inserting, for each of the packets to be transmitted over the PON, corresponding timestamp information in a header of the packet.

15. The system of claim 1 , wherein the first OLT and one or more of the additional OLTs are configured to perform TC-layer bonding for packets to be transmitted over the PON.

16. The system of claim 1 , wherein:

the additional OLTs includes a subset of additional OLTs that each host a failover bonding engine; and

an OLT included in the subset of additional OLTs includes one or more processors that cause the failover bonding engine to perform operations including:

determining that the bonding engine hosted on the first OLT is not operational; and

based on determining that the bonding engine hosted on the first OLT is not operational, distributing the operations to be performed by the bonding engine hosted on the first OLT to the failover bonding engines hosted on the OLTs included in the subset of additional OLTs.

17. A method performed by an optical line terminal (OLT) bonding engine hosted on a given OLT, the method comprising:

selecting packet data for transmission over the PON;

identifying a transmission wavelength assigned to the packet data;

identifying, from among additional OLTs, a particular OLT to transmit the packet data over the PON based on the corresponding wavelength of the particular OLT matching the identified transmission wavelength assigned to the packet formatting the packet data based on the particular OLT;

transmitting the formatted packet data to the particular OLT for transmission over a communications interface, wherein a bonding engine of the given OLT operates as a link aggregation group (LAG) distribution processor that is configured to communicate with multiple ONUs through unbonded XGEMs across multiple wavelengths.

18. A non-transitory computer-readable storage device encoded with computer program instructions that, when executed by an optical line terminal (OLT) controller, cause the OLT controller to perform operations comprising:

selecting packet data for transmission over the PON;

identifying a transmission wavelength assigned to the packet data;

identifying, from among the additional OLTs, a particular OLT to transmit the packet data over the PON based on the corresponding wavelength of the particular OLT matching the identified transmission wavelength assigned to the packet;

formatting the packet data based on the particular OLT; and

transmitting the formatted packet data to the particular OLT for transmission over a communications interface, wherein a bonding engine of the OLT operates as a link aggregation group (LAG) distribution processor that is configured to communicate with multiple ONUs through unbonded XGEMs across multiple wavelengths.