Technological challenges on the road toward transparent networking

Abstract

The sustainable growth of high-bandwidth services and on-demand applications has introduced new challenges to next-generation networks in terms of capacity, configurability, and resiliency. Significant networking advancements need to be achieved with architectures and technologies that are scalable with respect to cost, size, and power requirements, while they should be capable of handling high traffic volumes and dynamically changing connection patterns. Transparent networking has the potential to meet those requirements and offer significant benefits in terms of performance and cost. We present the key enabling technologies, review the state-of-the-art achievements, and discuss the new opportunities that optical transparency has and will introduce.