An eight-wavelength 160-km transparent metro WDM ring network featuring cascaded erbium-doped waveguide amplifiers

We demonstrate an 8/spl times/2.5 Gb/s wavelength-division-multiplexing metropolitan ring network in which each network-sourced wavelength constitutes a distinct multiuser virtual ring. The ring's four nodes feature erbium-doped waveguide amplifiers, which promise future integrability.