R and D priorities and challenges for optical networking

Summary form only given. Today, the telecommunication industry is experiencing "a nuclear winter". It is a challenging proposition right now to debate research and development (R and D) priorities for optical networking. However, even though the telecommunication market is unsettled today, we need to be ready with appropriate technological solutions to meet the growing bandwidth needs of our information society. Optical networking - using wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) - is the technology for meeting these demands. While there is a glut of dark fiber and WDM transmission capacity today, we believe that there will be a tremendous need for optical switching equipment for managing high-capacity optical signals. This talk first makes the case for the important role software plays in bringing cost-effective and intelligent optical networking to the marketplace. After providing an overview of telecommunication networks, we discuss promising R and D challenges for optical networking in access and metropolitan areas. Then, we examine the near-term R and D challenges for backbone optical networks: namely, dynamic provisioning of high-capacity connections of different bandwidths, fault management, and topology engineering. Finally, we state R and D priorities over a longer-term horizon.