One embodiment of the present invention provides a system that performs layer 3 aware switching in an Ethernet passive optical network which includes a central node and at least one remote node. Program guide state information is stored in a remote control which generates and delivers a pseudo-interactive guide to end users with the system state information (guide information to channel mapping maintained in the remote control device. In particular aspects, a scheduler assigns a weight and sequence number to each destination and tracks a port segment count and schedules polling of ports using these parameters.