Integrated packet/circuit hybrid network field trial with production traffic [invited]

We report the first field trials of an integrated packet/circuit hybrid optical network. In a long-haul field trial with production traffic, the mean capacity utilization of an Ethernet wavelength is doubled. The transport shares a single lightpath between the circuit and packet layers. Router bypassing is demonstrated at sub-wavelength granularity in a metro network field trial. In both trials the circuit quality of service is shown to be independent of the load of the network. The vacant resources in the circuit are utilized by the packet layer's statistical multiplexing in an interleaved manner without affecting the timing of the circuit. Inaddition, an analytical model that provides an upper bound on the maximum achievable utilization is presented.