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 DEGREES-century network has to fully evolve from voice-oriented legacy networks, not only by increasing the transmission capacity of...

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 DEGREES-century network has to fully evolve from voice-oriented legacy networks, not only by increasing the transmission capacity of...

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...