GUESTEDITORIAL OPTICAL NETWORKING: SIGNS OF MATURITY
Sudhir 5. Dixit
Philip 1. Lin
ne of the rewards of volunteering as Lightwave Series editors is the opportunity to observe how optical communication technology is evolving. The steady progress often goes unnoticed until one sits back and contemplates the state of the technology. As we wrap up the February 2002 issue, we notice that the articles in this issue represent some of the indicators that optical networking has truly matured. Those of us working in this area should be proud of our accomplishments and continue to strive to make optical networking pervasive and ubiquitous. Our hope is that the Lightwave Series provides a convenient venue for the community to spur each other, and in some small way contributes to the progress. Keep those submissions coming, for it would be ironic if we were not good in communicating with each other while working on a communication technology. The signs of maturity for a technology are analogous to those for an organism. They include the ability to perform different tasks, more complex tasks, more efficiently and reliably, and in the midst of practical challenges. The above list is by no means comprehensive, but we submit to you that any technology possessing the abilities listed can be considered mature. We further submit that optical communication technology indeed possesses these sure signs of maturity. Those of you who plan to attend the Optical Fiber Conference (OFC) 2002 in Anaheim, California, in March will surely confirm these observations! The ability to perform different tasks: Optical communication’s birthplace is in long haul transports, but recently there has been much activity in the access arena. Optical networking is no longer a monopoly of the transport network. Quite a number of startups as well as incumbent equipment vendors are offering optical access products. At the same time, standards activities such as IEEE 802.3 ensure that optical access is more than just a passing fad. These are evidences that the community believes the optical technology is ready to be pushed from the core toward the edge of the network. Optical access is the only technology that can satiate the ever-increasingbandwidth need. One can even argue that the transport side of optical communication is stagnant waiting for optical access to open up the first mile. We are glad that this issue includes two articles on Ethernet PONS that represent this current focus in optical access. The ability to perform more complex tasks: The optical network has become more complex, perhaps a victim of its own success. As the advantage of optical networking becomes more obvious, more is expected from it. Rather than providing a simple bandwidth pipe, an optical network is expected to transport optical packets and switch the packets on the fly. A sign of maturity is the ability to simplify complex tasks. Optical burst switching (OBS) is an example of such simplification. This issue contains an article on OBS and one particular signaling scheme to make optical packet network possible.
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The ability to perform tasks more efficiently: The creativity of the people working in the optical networking field never ceases to amaze us. Someone is always finding a better and more efficient method of doing the same task. In the shared protection network, the authors present a new protection scheme that is a generalization of link- and path-based protection schemes. Innovative ideas like this are responsible for the advancement of our field. The ability to perform tasks reliably: Reliability is a required ingredient when a technology transfers from the laboratory to the real world. Many advances have been made in optical protection schemes. Most providers will not deploy optical switches without the equipment having some protection mechanism. The article on protection we include in this issue goes one step further. It investigates beyond the data layer and discusses the subtleties in control plane design for reliable networks. The ability to perform tasks in the midst of practical challenges: New technology gives rise to new practical problems. Ironically, the advantage of transparency in optical network creates a problem for monitoring signal health. Many monitoring technologies are protocol-dependent and cannot be applied over a wide range of data formats. We include in this series an article addressing this issue, although the issue is far from being solved. These signs of maturity should encourage us to continue to press on and advance optical communication technology. We look forward to more submissions from the community. As always, we thank those involved in making this issue possible, especially the reviewers.
BIOGRAPHIES SUOHIR 5. DIXIT [SM] (
[email protected].) is a site manager and head of the
Broadband Networks department at Nokia Research Center, Burlington, Massachusetts, specializing in Internet. optical networks, mobile/wireless networks, and content delivery. Prior to joining Nokia in 1996 he held various engineering and management positions at other major companies, e.g., NYNEX and GTE (both now Verizon), Motorola, Wang, Harris, and STL (now Nortel Europe). He received a B.E. degree from Maulana Azad College of Technology, Bhopal, India, an M.E. degree from Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani, India, and a Ph.D. degree from the University of StrathClyde, Glasgow, Scotland, all in electrical engineering. He also received an M.B.A. degree from Florida Institute of Technology, Melbourne. He has published extensively, and has several patents either granted or pending. PHILIP J. LIN (
[email protected]) i s a staff research engineer at the Tellabs Research Center and a visiting scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He received a B.S. (‘89) in engineering from the California Institute of Technology and an S.M. (‘91) and a Ph.D. (‘96)in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His Ph.D. thesis work was on all-optical backbone networks. His current research areas include optical network architecture, optical system design, and network optimization. He has published several conference and journal papers, and has several patents either granted or pending. He recently received honorable mention for the Eta Kappa Nu Outstanding Young Electrical Engineer Award.
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