Optical networks based on wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) tech­ nology offer the promise to satisfy the bandwidth requirements of the Inter­ net infrastructure, and provide a scalable solution to support the bandwidth needs of future applications in the local and wide areas. In a waveleng- routed network, an optical channel, referred to as a lightpath, is set up between two network nodes for communication. Using WDM technology, an optical fiber link can support multiple non-overlapping wavelength channels, each of which can be operated at the data rate of 10 Gbps or 40 Gbps today. On the other hand, only a fraction of customers are expected to have a need for such a high bandwidth. Due to the large cost of the optical backbone infrastruc­ ture and enormous WDM channel capacity, connection requests with diverse low-speed bandwidth requirements need to be efficiently groomed onto hi- capacity wavelength channels. This book investigates the optimized design, provisioning, and performance analysis of traffic-groomable WDM networks, and proposes and evaluates new WDM network architectures. Organization of the Book Significant amount of research effort has been devoted to traffic grooming in SONET/WDM ring networks since the current telecom networks are mainly deployed in the form of ring topologies or interconnected rings. As the long-haul backbone networks are evolving to irregular mesh topologies, traffic grooming in optical WDM mesh networks becomes an extremely important and practical research topic for both industry and academia.

Traffic Grooming in Optical WDM Mesh Networks captures the state-of-the-art in the design and analysis of network architectures, protocols, and algorithms for implementing efficient traffic grooming in optical WDM mesh networks. Key topics include:

* Static traffic grooming

* Dynamic traffic grooming

* Grooming models and policies

* Grooming node architectures

* Design of grooming network

* Traffic grooming in next-generation SONET/SDH networks

The authors investigate traffic-grooming problems in optical WDM mesh networks from various aspects. They cover static and dynamic traffic grooming, as well as grooming policies for both environments. A fundamental graph model for traffic-grooming networks is proposed. A variety of grooming-node architectures are examined and their performances compared. Design of traffic-grooming networks using different node architectures is explored, and traffic grooming in next-generation SONET/SDH networks is presented.