Network service providers: Practical considerations for optical network planning

Optical network evolution is driven by network service providers' business constraints that require networks to provide large capacity, high resiliency, flexibility, and scalable bandwidth for multi-service offerings at the lowest cost. This paper presents the customers' view of optical networking trends and new requirements for the infrastructure. It covers three main areas: data-optical convergence, network element consolidation, and network resiliency and survivability. The challenge to optical network planning, design, and optimization is to allow any network capacity to be transformed into usable bandwidth that can be customized for service delivery. New network architectures must be devised to meet these challenges. This, in turn, will require a new generation of network elements to provide the optical network with much-needed flexibility, adaptability, and ease of operation for all types of service.