A prototype circuit-switched multi-wavelength optical metropolitan-area network

A progress report on Rainbow-I, a prototype optical network based on wavelength-division multiplexing, is presented. Rainbow-I supports full-duplex circuit-switched interconnection of up to 32 IBM PS/2 workstations over a diameter of 25 km, at sustained bit rates of up to 300 Mb/s per connection, allowing a total network capacity of 9.6 Gb/s. Different connections are transparent to each other and may use different protocols and bit rates. The authors describe the network architecture and the protocol used to set up and disconnect connections across the network. The Rainbow-I MicroChannel adaptor is outlined. Future enhancements to the current adaptor, some of the lessons learned while building this prototype, the limitations of the prototype, and ways to overcome these limitations are discussed