How four technologies will accelerate deployment of optical network architectures. Steve Cortez and Michael Dickerson ignificant advances in optical fiber components are accelerating carrier interest in design and deployment requirements for the all-optical network.
Significant challenges remain in the areas of standardization, design criteria and network modeling.
Solving these challenges is key to successful introduction and deployment of the all-optical network architecture. The reference frequency will be at 193.1 THz, as outlined in ITU-T draft Rec. Standards committees are evaluating more specific recommendations that will enable optical performance characteristics to be defined in detail. These criteria will govern the ultimate scalability and survivability of the all-optical network. The biggest challenge for these working groups is to address the level of transparency to which the all-optical network will have to conform.