Optical flow switching: A new “green” transport mechanism for fiber networks

Present-day data networks are being challenged by the relentless growth of bandwidth demand. Most of this future growth, however, is not arising from more users with the same application bandwidth demands, but rather from the dramatic increase in bandwidth demand of emerging applications. The compounding of these two trends has set the stage for optical networking technology to make significant contributions in next-generation data network architecture. In this talk, we will explore key research problems of optical network architecture with emphasis on optical flow switching that, if properly exploited, will enable significant growth and cost-effective scalability of next-generation data networks.