IP based optical control plane

The exponential growth in demand for Internet service is reshaping telecom industry and driving the model for next generation infrastructure towards converged, multiservice network with IP-over-glass at its heart. Current vision of the Internet transport network is a model with routers, switches, optical crossconnects (OXCs), DWDM optical line systems (OLSs), and add-drop multiplexers (ADMs) that use a common control plane [e.g., generalized MPLS (GMPLS)] to dynamically provision resources and to provide network survivability using protection and restoration techniques. The idea is to base this common control plane on existing IP/MPLS technology. Some new protocols have to be created (like LMP), and also some existing protocols have to be enhanced (like OSPF and IS-IS). In this article we point out needed modifications and also discuss some issues that still need to be solve.