Ibm Research Program On All-optical Networks

Our experience, during the five-year existence of our program, has shown us that the value of these networks is not just in the great carrying capacity of optical fiber, but in the ability of FDM/WDM architectures to carry different protocols on different wavelengths, thus avoiding the usual translations to a common protocol and bit rate basis. This "protocol transparency" has proved of paramount interest to those users with which we have been dealing.