Network Traffic and system capacity: Scaling for the future

After the collapse of the market for optical communications equipment at the beginning of the millennium, there was diminished interest and investment in technologies for long-distance optical transmission. This was largely a result of the enormous capacities afforded by wavelength-division multiplexed systems. The systems deployed early in the decade had capacities comparable to the total network traffic. This situation is about to change. Those 2000-era systems are becoming full now, and growth in traffic, together with trends in the scaling of technologies for optical communications, indicates that capacity of systems is unlikely scale quickly enough to keep pace with demand. These trends will have profound impact on the market for equipment and the types of systems that will be needed. The tutorial will show evidence of these historical trends and the scaling they imply and discuss the implications.