Smart routers-simple optics: an architecture for the optical Internet

With the Internet protocol (IP) being the dominant protocol for new network services, there is increasing pressure to optimize the network infrastructure and protocols for IP traffic. We have designed a network architecture where each node integrates a router and an optical layer cross connect to create a router optimized for the optical Internet. IP is responsible for all networking functions including network optimality and packet and optical resource management, but delegates transmission work to the optical layer, exploiting the capacity of the optical layer cross-connects. While all control and signaling uses IP, the optical lightpaths may carry arbitrary traffic, and so the control applies as well to non-IP traffic.