Preface

Abstract

The tremendous growth of the Internet, the large increase in traffic demands, and the relentless demand for network capacity have produced a need for new flexible types of services. Optical networks are expected to support the diverse requirements of a broad range of applications as they are evolving dramatically in terms of technology and architecture. In particular, optical component technology is rapidly maturing, offering cost effective solutions to a point where optical networks are currently being deployed in core backbone networks, and are gaining increased interest for deployment in metro and access environments. WDM systems are widely deployed, thanks to low-cost and high reliability of optical components. Core, metropolitan, and access networks are increasingly based on optical technologies to overcome the electronic bottleneck at network edge. Even, traditional multi-layer architecture, such as the widely deployed IP/ATM/SDH protocol stacks, are already based on WDM transport systems increasing efforts to move some of functionalities available in higher layers to the optical layer. New components and subsystems for very high speed optical networks offer new design options to network operators and designers.   (...)