An optical network unit (ONU) includes a transmitter and receiver to optically communicate with an optical line terminal (OLT) of a passive optical network. The ONU is configured to send an acknowledgment message to the OLT in response to a burst-profile message unicast by the OLT. The acknowledgement message indicates unsupported forward error correction (FEC) code in response to the burst-profile message identifying an FEC code for upstream transmission and the ONU not supporting the FEC code for upstream transmission to the OLT.