 When we looked at the Ethernet passive optical networks, we looked at them as a mechanism through which Ethernet was being considered as the first mile or last mile technology. Now there are efforts world over to increase the data rate. In that regard, the next generation network compatible passive optical networks are the next generation passive optical networks. The emphasis here is to increase the data rate both in the upstream as well as the downstream. So we'd look at the background for NG passive optical networks, we'd look at the data rate and the architecture recommendations. First of all, NG pawns over E pawns are meant to increase higher and higher data rates. This is actually attributed to the efforts that have taken place both at the ITU and the IEEE. Both of these organisations have tried to increase the data rate of the latest technology to the predecessor by a certain multiplying factor. As a thumb rule, ITU has been emphasising the latest technology to be at least four times to be its predecessor. In this case, the next generation pawns are supposed to be four times higher data rate as compared to the pre-synchronous digital hierarchy and the synchronous digital hierarchy based optical broadband networks. IEEE however recommends a data rate increase of 10. For instance, we've seen that to happen in Ethernet, 1 base T, 10 base T and 1000 base F. The data rates for the next generation passive optical networks as recommended by the ITU are 10 Gbps and 2.48 Gbps both upstream, both downstream and upstream respectively. Just compare this to the G pawns where the data rate was 2.488 Gbps on the downstream and 1.244 Gbps on the upstream. So we see that they have kept the factor of four, multiplying factor of four intact. Likewise, for the even advanced version of NG pawn known as NG pawn 2, the emphasis is to have data rates of 40 Gbps and there's a variant of it known as the G.989 series. We won't talk much about it, we'll look at it in subsequent detail. Now when we look at the architecture of these NG pawns, the overall speed gain is attained through certainly an increase in the utilization of wavelengths because after all fiber optic communication systems are based on wavelength division multiplexing. So on the downstream, the band of 1.578 micrometers is utilized, likewise on the upstream the 1270 nanometers wavelengths are utilized. So the isolation of these two upstream and downstream wavelengths into distinct non-overlapping bands allows a very high increase in the data rates. The additional feature of the next generation pawns is that these passive optical networks allow backward compatibility not only to G pawns but also to the traditional services such as the E1, T1 and the TDM based services. The distance that can be established between the passive splitter and the aggregator on the OLT side can go up to 60 kilometers.