Introduction to the JOCN Special Issue on Advanced Monitoring and Telemetry in Optical Networks

This special issue contains a collection of invited and contributed papers, including one review article and twelve research articles, on advanced monitoring and telemetry in optical networks. Service providers have made it clear that they are looking beyond physical capabilities when selecting their networking ecosystems. The network’s ability to collect, aggregate, and analyze performance metrics and take action in response to this data analysis is of growing importance, with an increased emphasis on streaming telemetry rather than legacy polling techniques. In contrast to network attributes such as transmission capacity where growth has been slowed by physical realities, advancements in monitoring and processing capabilities have accelerated the potential use of telemetry to drive network operation. The challenge is to hone the effort and harness the tracked data to maximize the advantages that can be obtained. To fully investigate these challenges, this special issue is focused on the intelligent use of monitoring and telemetry to control and manage optical networks. Brief summaries are provided for the included articles.