Abstract

The presentation explores the architecture and technologies that will achieve a network paradigm shift to a bandwidth-abundant B-ISDN. First, transport network technology evolution will be reviewed emphasizing the role of path layer technologies. They will be the key in developing a flexible, cost-effective, and failure resilient transport network. To make broadband multimedia services as ubiquitous as existing telephone services, a dramatic enhancement of transport network capability is necessary. I’ll then explore the technologies that will support this leap-WDM-based transport networking technologies. Optical path networks that exploit the combination of WDM transmission and wavelength routing will be shown to offer various benefits over existing networks. One of the important benefits is network cost reduction. The viable approaches to reducing network cost are identified. Finally, optical path related technologies will be discussed. An optical transport network layered architecture will be presented that retains maximum commonality with existing SDH-based networks. A new optical path cross-connect system that offers various advantages will be discussed. It exploits PLC (Planer Lightwave Circuit) and other commercially available technologies suitable for large-scale production. I will briefly demonstrate some of our recent hardware developments and show some cross-connect experiments that will verify the technical feasibility of the large scale optical path cross-connect.

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