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.