Patent attributes
The present disclosure generally pertains to systems and methods for discovering PME bonding groups. In one exemplary embodiment, a plurality of communication links are terminated by physical medium entities (PMEs). In this regard, each link is terminated at one end via a network PME and at another end via a remote PME at a customer premises. Each of the PMEs has a transceiver that is allowed to train during a training phase that precedes a data phase. After training, discovery of PME bonding groups is performed via data communicated over data phase control channels, which are operational while links are operational in the data phase, transmitting data using the Ethernet in the First Mile (EFM) encapsulation. For example, the control channel data may be communicated over a link-level embedded operations channel (EOC). In another example, the control channel data may be communicated using 64/65 Byte (B) code words. In another example, the control channel data may be communicated via an Ethernet operations, administration and maintenance (OAM) channel. In yet another example, the control channel data may be communicated via EFM fragment messaging.
