ABSTRACT:

Long-reach optics and configurable all-optical networks provide economic benefits for carriers in terms of both capital and operating expenses by significantly reducing the amount of equipment required in the network. Such networks are currently entering the marketplace, and there is a desire in the OIF and other standards organizations to generalize their respective architectural models to include alloptical networks. This contribution is a proposal for initiating a new project in the OIF to address the specific features of all-optical networks as they relate to signaling for automatic provisioning and restoration of optical paths. Since an all-optical network naturally forms a domain, another important aspect of this project relates to the more general problem of establishing connections across multi-domain networks.

Complete Contribution in Adobe Acrobat format (6 pages, 101,879 bytes)