Network Agility Through Flexible Transponders

The emergence of on-demand and dynamic user services has led to a growing need for networks to be rapidly reconfigurable. To enable connections to be established without manual intervention, equipment such as transponders must be predeployed throughout the network, and the network must be flexible to configure this equipment as needed. One means of achieving network agility is through the deployment of advanced core optical switches. We discuss an alternative approach that uses flexible transponder and regenerator cards. The combination of flexible cards and relatively simple core switches can approach the full agility provided by more advanced switches