The present invention provides methods to mitigate the problems associated with MAC address spoofing and denial of service attacks in an FTTH network system. The MAC address spoofing attack may occur when a computer hacker configures his computer to change the MAC address of a data signal to deceive the receiver of the signal's source address. The denial of service may occur when a computer hacker floods a file server with data packets. The present invention mitigates these attacks by modifying the software of certain components of the FTTH network system to enable the components to insert virtual MAC addresses, tags and codes into the data packets that identify a component of the communication related to the address of the source computer.