The IEEE hope to capitalise on the success of their existing Ethernet products. There is no doubt that these existing products were successful as they are in widespread use and form the basis for most computer LAN installations. Because of their high rate of adoption, these systems and the components from which these systems are built, are extremely cheap and well suited to the task for which they were designed.

Initially, design effort is being expended on creating a 16 way split PON with a reach of 10 km; however, how this will be used in a real access network is unclear as FSAN believe 32 way splitting, with a 20 km reach is optimal for such networks. The IEEE PON is designed to run at 1.25 Gbit/s, double that of the highest speed existing APON.

The idea is that by using these high volume components in different ways, a new Ethernet PON system could be designed. This is not quite the reality of the situation, however, as the functionality of Ethernet systems is not the same as that required by PON systems, Ethernet based or otherwise and significant changes will be required. For example, PON systems usually require a ranging protocol which enables remote multiplexors to access a common fibre upstream bearer channel with correct timing so as not to corrupt each others signals.

Furthermore, the optical power constraints are more severe as the split ratio and the bit rates of the PONs go up which mandates the use of more expensive optical components.