Optical transparency of a heterogeneous pan-European network

We have experimentally shown that the physical design of a transparent network should be tailored to both the network topology and the network traffic matrix. For a pan-European network for which 85% of the traffic was shorter than 2000 km, almost all connections may be transparent; with very simple engineering rules (erbium-doped fiber amplifiers only, no power equalization except for the per-band equalization in the node, constant static dispersion management whatever the ingress and egress nodes, and whatever the wavelength...). We have also experimentally shown how dispersion management should take into account unavoidable inaccuracies that are to be found in the field.