onu 2 onu n so that all the onus are treated equally the olt allocates bandwidth to all onus with downstream traffic in each epon dba cycle by default an onu checks all downstream packets and determines whether the packets are destined to it or not at time t 1 end of dba cycle 1 after the transmission of the downstream traffic packet of onu n the olt should have scheduled a downstream traffic packet destined for onu 1 if the olt has a downstream traffic packet queued for onu 1 onu 1 however finds or determines that the olt has scheduled a packet destined for onu 2 rather than a packet destined for onu 1 in accordance with the present method onu 1 may infer that it does not have a downstream traffic packet otherwise the olt would have scheduled and transmitted the traffic packet between the packets of onu n and onu 2 at time t 2 end of dba cycle 2 after the transmission of the downstream traffic packet of onu n the our again schedules a packet destined for onu 2 rather than a packet destined for onu 1 after onu n consequently onu 1 has as a strong inference that its downstream traffic queue at olt is empty the downstream queue status inference process of the present method does not require.