Requirements for a transparent pan-European network

Network operators should continuously consider the upgrading of their networks so that they are ready for the forthcoming increase of traffic, while keeping an efficient use of their existing resources. The paper deals with the study of the requirements of a pan-European network based on the network topology and the traffic model for the upcoming years. These dimensioning studies look into network requirements, such as node and link capacity, for the extreme case of having all the demand fully protected. This study also looks into the evolution of different parameters, such as connection length, number of channels and blocking probability, with and without wavelength conversion.