An IP over WDM protocol with routing and transport capabilities

A new IP over WDM protocol with routing and transport capabilities is proposed. This protocol utilizes the concept of label switching and wavelength information of wavelength division multiplexing (WDM). This protocol uses labels and length information as the physical transport framing and data link delineation at the same time and can handle routing processes in the core network. Thus, it can speed up the processes in future terabit networks. The transport adaptation and encapsulation scheme of this protocol is simple and transparent to the protocol data unit. Most of all, this protocol not only provides a transmission mechanism, but also integrates the multiprotocol label switching (MPLS) traffic engineering control concept as the IP transport and switching control plane. We present the adaptation and encapsulation scheme of the proposed protocol and analyze its framing and delineation performance.