Exploiting the attenuation of fiber-optic passive taps to create large high-capacity LANs and MANs

A local- or metropolitan-area network (LAN or MAN) that exploits the power losses of fiber-optic passive taps so that wavelengths can be reused in different portions of the network is proposed. This wavelength reuse makes it possible to design a large, high-capacity, multichannel network with many concurrent transmissions. An arbitrary number of nodes is supported by allowing packets to take multiple hops, when necessary, to reach their destinations. In one example configuration, there are two closed circular loops of fiber, one for transmissions in the clockwise direction and one for counterclockwise transmissions. Each node has one passive tap (per fiber), which is used for both a fixed-wavelength transmitter and a fixed-wavelength receiver