A discovery method, an optical communication method, and an optical communication system which can reduce an error of RTTs when an identifier is fixed after an allocated wavelength has been changed in wavelength-tunable WDM/TDM-PON and can prevent lowering of the bandwidth utilization efficiency. A table, in which a correspondence between child nodes and fixed identifiers as well as the RTTs of a frame with each of the identifiers in all combinations of allocated wavelengths are recorded, is created through a discovery process.