NEMESIS: a multigigabit optical local area network

A new architecture is developed for an integrated 20 Gbps fiber optic local area network (LAN) that supports data rates up to 9.6 Gbps. The architecture does not follow the standard, vertically-oriented open system interconnection (OSI) layering approach of other LANs. Instead, a horizontally-oriented model is introduced for the communication process to open up the three fundamental bottlenecks, i.e., opto-electronic, service and processing bottlenecks, that occur in a multi-Gbps integrated communication over multiwavelength optical networks. Furthermore, the design follows also a new concept called wavelength-dedicated-to-application (WDA) concept in opening up the opto-electronic and service bottlenecks. Separate, simplified and application-oriented protocols supporting both circuit- and packet-switching are used to open up the processing bottleneck