Optical Packet Access Protocols for WDM Networks

The fast growing traffic demand in telecommunication networks, by use of the Internet and an increasing number of broadband services for multimedia com­ munications, requires new high performance networking technologies. As such, optical WDM networks are playing a pivotal role. Wavelength Division Mul­ tiplexing (WDM) with many hundreds of wavelength channels per fiber is ex­ tensively being exploited in wide area networks. With respect to the ongoing trend towards a completely packet-switched m