Ultrafast optical TDM networking: Extension to the wide area

Recent work in the area of ultrafast optical time-division multiplexed (OTD M) networking at MIT Lincoln Laboratory is presented. A scalable helical lo cal area network or HLAN architecture, presented elsewhere as an architectu re well-suited to ultrafast OTDM LANs and MANs, is considered in the contex t of wide area networking. Two issues arise in scaling HLAN to the wide are a. The first is protocol extension: and the second is supporting the requir ed bandwidth on the long-haul links. In this paper we discuss these challen ges and describe progress made in both architecture and technologies requir ed for scaling HLAN to the wide area.