Merging Telecommunication Backbone Networks with IP Optical Technologies

by Shigeo Urushidani & Ichiro Inoue SPIE News room, accessed 12 May 2006 The rapid growth in broadband Internet-related services is expected to reach roughly half of all households in Japan by 2010. The maximum speed has rapidly grown from a few kbits/s to hundreds of Mbits/s. In parallel, we have been seeing various new services emerging, including voice over IP, multimedia file downloads, and videoconferencing. All of these new services are based on IP, and, since optical technology offers exceptional capacity, we see this as the most promising infrastructure with which to support them. What is needed is a way to integrate and migrate IP and optical technologies into the single backbone network architecture. Read more