Unique optical networking facilities and cross-layer networking

The future global network will have a number of characteristics, enabled by novel optical technologies, that make it distinct from today's network: optical domain will likely become part of the convergence layer and service provisioning will involve explicit cross-layer interactions and flexible optical spectrum management. These will be tied together by intelligent cross-layer protocol software. In order to enable this transition, we need a new networking protocol architecture and network facilities that allow experimentation across all networking layers at scale.