Sub-wavelength switching for future Internet

It is a challenge to break up the wavelength into smaller sub-wavelength parts for optical network. The sub-wavelength switch (OSS) can be realized employing time and space division multiplexing, and orthogonal frequency division multiplexing among others. In the industry side, automatic switched optical network (ASON) based on synchronous digital hierarchy (SDH) is widely employed in the backbone network. The first part of this paper discusses the highly dynamic performance of ASON switched connections with measurement and standardization effort. In the academic side, on the other hand, optical packet switch (OPS) attracts more attention as a long term evolution of optical network. The second part of this paper discusses the efficient aggregation of IP packets into the optical packet. The gap between the lengths of optical packet and switched connection duration are discussed.