A QoS-Based Optical Networking

Abstract

This chapter is dedicated to an overview of the existing network and node architectures for wavelength routing necessary to understand the novel, QoS-based approaches that will be taken. Obviously, a broad area of different issues for control, network architecture, resource allocation, and policies can be associated with QoS-based routing. However, rather than addressing single architectural aspects, we will try to justify the necessity for QoS-based consideration of network performance, which is expected to enter the networking market in the short term as a natural progressive step for wavelength-routed networks. Therefore, before going into the basics of optical node and optical network architectures (a subject so far treated by a number of excellent books, scientific papers and experimental trials), a few important introductory words will be dedicated to the notion of QoS, a feature that is still missing in the existing works on wavelength routing.