In recent years, with the rapid growth of the Internet, the bandwidth demand for data traffic is exploding. Optical networks based on wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) technology offer the promise to satisfy the bandwidth requirements of the Internet infrastructure. With WDM technology, signals are carried simultaneously on mUltiple wavelengths on a single fiber. WDM provides a practical approach of resolving the mismatch between the fiber ca pacity and the peak electronic processing speed. Mesh-based WDM networks have recently attracted much research and development interest since the...