Effect of Lightpath Bit-rate on the Dimensioning of Automatically Switched Optical Networks

We analyze the economic viability of 40 Gb/s deployment for an automatically switched optical network (ASON). We design and analyze a national network delivering a high bandwidth access to every user, and investigate the capital cost of a waveband groomed ASON for 10 Gb/s and 40 Gb/s. Based on this analysis, we show that the 40 Gb/s system is more cost-effective and scalable than the 10 Gb/s system