Managing optical networks

The surge in demand for access technologies such as cable modems, xDSL, and wireless data suggests that information will be the most valuable commodit y in this new millennium. Eventually, data will constitute 99% of the conte nt sent over telecommunications networks. The demand for information will r equire carriers to apply new methods and technologies to migrate their exis ting voice networks to data networks. An intelligent optical core using wav elength division multiplexing (WDM) will meet a carrier's needs for scale, provisioning, and restoration and will increase overall efficiency. The ove rall efficiency of tomorrow's network will be a reflection of today's optic al transport protocol. Currently, Lucent Technologies' WaveStar(TM) LambdaR outer and its optical network navigator system (ONNS) enable a distributed network-wide control plane that specifically addresses the current core net work requirements for wavelength provisioning and restoration. The ONNS is based on and adopts mature Internet protocol (IP)-centric protocols, and it provides effective traffic restoration and traffic engineering capabilitie s in the optical network to satisfy a customer's optical layer needs. Furth ermore, it is designed to facilitate control plane integration with data ne tworks and to have the flexibility to accommodate future network-related ne eds as they arise. Therefore, Lucent's LambdaRouter (with its distributed c ontrol plane) is the appropriate solution for controlling optical data netw orks today and in the future.