Study on architecture of WDM optical network

With the increasing demand for network bandwidth, and the recent phenomenal advances in optical wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) networking technologies, a major component of the Next Generation Internet will be an Internet protocol (IP)-based on optical WDM network. Optical switching is an important component of hierarchical switching, providing the means to inexpensively switch sets of wavelengths. As IP over WDM networking technologies mature, a number of important architectural, management and control issues have surfaced. These issues need to be addressed before a true Next Generation Optical Internet can emerge. In this paper, we analyze some of the key architecture and discuss them corresponding approaches and advances made toward addressing these issues. We first analyze the different IP[WDM networking architectural models, then discuss the IP over switched WDM architecture. We present an analysis the potential benefits of MPLS networks. It builds on the strength of multi-protocol label switching for fine-grain IP load balancing, and on the strength of reconfigurable WDM networking for expanding the bottleneck bandwidth.