Extending the UCLP software with a Dynamic Optical Multicast Service to support high performance digital media

Date-intensive high performance, high quality digital media traffic cannot be accommodated on traditional layer 3 networks. Alternative technologies to transmit this traffic through the network, such as optical multicast, are being investigated. A prototype of an optical multicast service was showcased during the 7^th annual LambdaGrid Workshop celebrated in Prague last September. The prototype used time division multiplexing (TDM) technology as the data plane and user controlled lightpaths (UCLP) as the control/service plane. This paper describes the extensions that were done to the UCLP software to provide the dynamic optical multicast service and shows the results achieved during the Prague demonstration.