High capacity optical networking technologies

With the tremendous growth in the Internet and the use of multimedia services, the demands for increased transmission capacity and switching/routing-node throughput for trunk networks are increasing rapidly. In addition, networks must now accommodate a variety of services as independently as possible. Optical network technology will play an important role in constructing cost-effective transparent trunk networks. In this paper we briefly discuss the technologies needed to implement optical networks: wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) to increase transmission capacity, photonic transport to support high-capacity flexible networks, and photonic switching to expand node capacities and functionality.