There has continuously been a massive growth of Internet traffic for these years despite the "bubble burst" in year 2000. As the telecom market is gradually picking up, it would be a consensus in telecom and data-com industries that the CAPEX (Capital Expenditures) to rebuild the network infrastructure to cope with this traffic growth would be imminent, while the OPEX (Operational Expenditures) has to be within a tight constraint. Therefore, the newly built 2r^-century network has to fully evolve from voice-oriented legacy networks, not only by increasing the transmission capacity of WDM links but also by introducing switching technologies in optical domain to provide full-connectivity to support a wide variety of services. This book stems from the technical contributions presented at the Optical Networks and Technology Conference (OpNeTec), inaugurated this year 2004 in Pisa, Italy, and collects innovations of optical network technologies toward the 2V^ century network. High-quality recent research results on optical networks and related technologies are presented, including IP over WDM integration, burst and packet switchings, control and managements, operation, metro- and access networks, and components and devices in the perspective of network application. An effort has been made throughout the conference, hopefully reflected at least partially in this book, to bring together researchers, scientists, and engineers working both academia and industries to discuss the relative impact of networks on technologies and vice versa, with a vision of the future.

There has continuously been a massive growth of Internet traffic for these years despite the "bubble burst" in year 2000. As the telecom market is gradually picking up, it would be a consensus in telecom and data-com industries that the CAPEX (Capital Expenditures) to rebuild the network infrastructure to cope with this traffic growth would be imminent, while the OPEX (Operational Expenditures) has to be within a tight constraint. Therefore, the newly built 2r^-century network has to fully evolve from voice-oriented legacy networks, not only by increasing the transmission capacity of WDM links but also by introducing switching technologies in optical domain to provide full-connectivity to support a wide variety of services. This book stems from the technical contributions presented at the Optical Networks and Technology Conference (OpNeTec), inaugurated this year 2004 in Pisa, Italy, and collects innovations of optical network technologies toward the 2V^ century network. High-quality recent research results on optical networks and related technologies are presented, including IP over WDM integration, burst and packet switchings, control and managements, operation, metro- and access networks, and components and devices in the perspective of network application. An effort has been made throughout the conference, hopefully reflected at least partially in this book, to bring together researchers, scientists, and engineers working both academia and industries to discuss the relative impact of networks on technologies and vice versa, with a vision of the future.

There has continuously been a massive growth of Internet traffic for these years despite the "bubble burst" in year 2000. As the telecom market is gradually picking up, it would be a consensus in telecom and data-com industries that the CAPEX (Capital Expenditures) to rebuild the network infrastructure to cope with this traffic growth would be imminent, while the OPEX (Operational Expenditures) has to be within a tight constraint. Therefore, the newly built 2r^-century network has to fully evolve from voice-oriented legacy networks, not only by increasing the transmission capacity of WDM links but also by introducing switching technologies in optical domain to provide full-connectivity to support a wide variety of services. This book stems from the technical contributions presented at the Optical Networks and Technology Conference (OpNeTec), inaugurated this year 2004 in Pisa, Italy, and collects innovations of optical network technologies toward the 2V^ century network. High-quality recent research results on optical networks and related technologies are presented, including IP over WDM integration, burst and packet switchings, control and managements, operation, metro- and access networks, and components and devices in the perspective of network application. An effort has been made throughout the conference, hopefully reflected at least partially in this book, to bring together researchers, scientists, and engineers working both academia and industries to discuss the relative impact of networks on technologies and vice versa, with a vision of the future.

The day when fiber will deliver new, yet now only foreseeable, broadband ser­ vices to the end user is getting nearer and nearer as we make our way towards the prophetic year 2000. Step by step, as we move from first generation lasers and fibers to the by now common erbium-doped fiber amplifiers, looking forward to such things as wavelength multiplexing and solitons, photonic switching and optical storage, the community of researchers in optical communications has stepped into the era of photonic networks. It is not just a question of terminology. Optical communication means tech­ nology to the same extent that photonic network means services. If it is true that information is just as marketable a product as oil or coke, the providing of an extensive global information infrastructure may end up having an even greater impact than the setting up of a world-wide railroad network did at the beginning of the industrial era. Just like wagons, bandwidth will be responsible for carrying and delivering goods to customers. The challenge for all of us in this field is for it to function in every section of the overall network, transport, access and customer area, in the best possible way: the fastest, most economical and most flexible. New services provided by a new network that exploits the potential and peculiarities of photonics surely requires a rethinking of solutions, new ideas, new architec­ tures, new design, especially where electronics is still dominant, as in transport and access networks.

There has continuously been a massive growth of Internet traffic for these years despite the "bubble burst" in year 2000. As the telecom market is gradually picking up, it would be a consensus in telecom and data-com industries that the CAPEX (Capital Expenditures) to rebuild the network infrastructure to cope with this traffic growth would be imminent, while the OPEX (Operational Expenditures) has to be within a tight constraint. Therefore, the newly built 2r^-century network has to fully evolve from voice-oriented legacy networks, not only by increasing the transmission capacity of WDM links but also by introducing switching technologies in optical domain to provide full-connectivity to support a wide variety of services. This book stems from the technical contributions presented at the Optical Networks and Technology Conference (OpNeTec), inaugurated this year 2004 in Pisa, Italy, and collects innovations of optical network technologies toward the 2V^ century network. High-quality recent research results on optical networks and related technologies are presented, including IP over WDM integration, burst and packet switchings, control and managements, operation, metro- and access networks, and components and devices in the perspective of network application. An effort has been made throughout the conference, hopefully reflected at least partially in this book, to bring together researchers, scientists, and engineers working both academia and industries to discuss the relative impact of networks on technologies and vice versa, with a vision of the future.

There has continuously been a massive growth of Internet traffic for these years despite the "bubble burst" in year 2000. As the telecom market is gradually picking up, it would be a consensus in telecom and data-com industries that the CAPEX (Capital Expenditures) to rebuild the network infrastructure to cope with this traffic growth would be imminent, while the OPEX (Operational Expenditures) has to be within a tight constraint. Therefore, the newly built 2r^-century network has to fully evolve from voice-oriented legacy networks, not only by increasing the transmission capacity of WDM links but also by introducing switching technologies in optical domain to provide full-connectivity to support a wide variety of services. This book stems from the technical contributions presented at the Optical Networks and Technology Conference (OpNeTec), inaugurated this year 2004 in Pisa, Italy, and collects innovations of optical network technologies toward the 2V^ century network. High-quality recent research results on optical networks and related technologies are presented, including IP over WDM integration, burst and packet switchings, control and managements, operation, metro- and access networks, and components and devices in the perspective of network application. An effort has been made throughout the conference, hopefully reflected at least partially in this book, to bring together researchers, scientists, and engineers working both academia and industries to discuss the relative impact of networks on technologies and vice versa, with a vision of the future.

There has continuously been a massive growth of Internet traffic for these years despite the "bubble burst" in year 2000. As the telecom market is gradually picking up, it would be a consensus in telecom and data-com industries that the CAPEX (Capital Expenditures) to rebuild the network infrastructure to cope with this traffic growth would be imminent, while the OPEX (Operational Expenditures) has to be within a tight constraint. Therefore, the newly built 2r^-century network has to fully evolve from voice-oriented legacy networks, not only by increasing the transmission capacity of WDM links but also by introducing switching technologies in optical domain to provide full-connectivity to support a wide variety of services. This book stems from the technical contributions presented at the Optical Networks and Technology Conference (OpNeTec), inaugurated this year 2004 in Pisa, Italy, and collects innovations of optical network technologies toward the 2V^ century network. High-quality recent research results on optical networks and related technologies are presented, including IP over WDM integration, burst and packet switchings, control and managements, operation, metro- and access networks, and components and devices in the perspective of network application. An effort has been made throughout the conference, hopefully reflected at least partially in this book, to bring together researchers, scientists, and engineers working both academia and industries to discuss the relative impact of networks on technologies and vice versa, with a vision of the future.

The day when fiber will deliver new, yet now only foreseeable, broadband ser­ vices to the end user is getting nearer and nearer as we make our way towards the prophetic year 2000. Step by step, as we move from first generation lasers and fibers to the by now common erbium-doped fiber amplifiers, looking forward to such things as wavelength multiplexing and solitons, photonic switching and optical storage, the community of researchers in optical communications has stepped into the era of photonic networks. It is not just a question of terminology. Optical communication means tech­ nology to the same extent that photonic network means services. If it is true that information is just as marketable a product as oil or coke, the providing of an extensive global information infrastructure may end up having an even greater impact than the setting up of a world-wide railroad network did at the beginning of the industrial era. Just like wagons, bandwidth will be responsible for carrying and delivering goods to customers. The challenge for all of us in this field is for it to function in every section of the overall network, transport, access and customer area, in the best possible way: the fastest, most economical and most flexible. New services provided by a new network that exploits the potential and peculiarities of photonics surely requires a rethinking of solutions, new ideas, new architec­ tures, new design, especially where electronics is still dominant, as in transport and access networks.