Time shift of pulses due to dispersion slope and nonlinearity

We show that the time delay of optical pulses traveling in long fibers is influenced by the dispersion slope and the fiber nonlinearity. Consequently, one or more new pulses that are inserted by add-drop operations into a pulse train that has already traveled a long distance may shift relative to the old pulses. This time shift delays the initial pulses more than the newly inserted ones, so that the newly inserted pulses can leave their time frames, leading to errors.