Architectural issues for robust optical access

Optical access networks are beginning to be deployed at the edge of the optical backbone network to support access by the high-end users that drive increased bandwidth demands. This development in the applications of optical networking poses new challenges in the areas of medium access, topology design, and network management. In particular, since optical access networks carry high volumes of critical traffic, the level of reliability and robustness traditionally reserved for core applications must be implemented in access networks. We survey access network architectures and outline the issues associated with providing reliability for these architectures. In the area of architecture design, two main approaches emerge. The first considers dedicated optical access networks, such as stars or folded buses, to implement optical access LANs and MANs. The second is overlay architectures, which use existing network infrastructure. Overlay architectures seek to replicate, on a smaller scale, logical topologies akin to those of backbone networks, or may instead create architectures specifically designed for access purposes.