Transport Metropolitan Optical Networking: Evolving Trends in the Architecture Design and Computer Modeling

This paper presents our work on the design, engineering, and evaluation of end-to-end performance of circuit-switched, wavelength-division multiplexed, optical regional metropolitan area networks. From our initial research efforts on studying and quantifying the benefits of optical transparency in metropolitan area networks, to identifying the key transport-layer transmission impairments which affect the performance of these networks, to a semianalytic technique used for engineering their performance, this paper reviews our work on the subject through several network case studies and clearly demonstrates the architecture evolution trends during the last few years. The second part of the paper presents our current work on the impacts of the network deployment slowdown on the advancement of WDM in metro and in particular the important tradeoffs of performance and cost. A case study of a current metropolitan network implementation is analyzed and the performance of new technologies presented.