Advances in photonic packet switching: An overview

The current fast-growing Internet traffic is demanding more and more networ k capacity every day. The concept of wavelength-division multiplexing has p rovided us an opportunity to multiply network capacity. Current optical swi tching technologies allow us to rapidly deliver the enormous bandwidth of W DM networks. Photonic packet switching offers high-speed, data rate/format transparency, and configurability, which are some of the important characte ristics needed in future networks supporting different forms of data. In th is article we present some of the critical issues involved in designing and implementing all-optical packet-switched networks.