Scalable, fault-tolerant 1-hop wavelength routing networks

A fault-tolerant, transparent and scalable 1-hop network architecture based on distributed queue dual bus (DQDB) is presented. It consists of a number of DQDB subnets fully interconnected to one another by wavelengths via a fault-tolerant wavelength-routing fabric. The wavelength interconnection provides a neat way to scale up the network while extending the congestion-free property of the DQDB subnets to the entire network and ensuring the fault-tolerant properties of the fabric. It is shown how fault protection and path diversity can be provided systematically. Multiple protocols can be supported. The network could be scaled in capacity (≫terabit/sec), in the number of nodes (≫thousands), and in size (≫thousands of kilometers)