Experimental investigation on data and control planes of the OMEGA test bed

We describe the OMEGA test bed, an all-optical five-node IP over WDM re-configurable two-layer network. Its data plane is evaluated in physical impairments experiments, based on measurements of BER, eye-diagram and OSNR, with emphasis on the influence of number of hops, number of channels, amplifier location (before or after the node), and channel power fluctuation after routing over different length paths. The OMEGA control plane provides protection and restoration functionalities with wavelength routing. Its operation is demonstrated in two transmission experiments: Gb-Ethernet and IP over WDM with protection at the optical layer.