Optical Ethernet—Flexible Optical Metro Networks

Enhanced flexibility in optical transport networks is a key requirement to support dynamic traffic load in packet-based networks. Today, flexibility is achieved by packet switches linked by static point-to-point transport connections. Wide-stretched synchronization patterns, line coding schemes, and forward error correction (FEC) frames prohibit flexibility right at the transport layer. We introduce a new optical transport concept that combines packet aggregation with a multipoint-to-point line coding and FEC processing. This concept avoids the quadratic full mesh scalability problem of other aggregated switching technologies such as, e.g., wavelength switching. It combines the flexibility of a distributed Ethernet switch and the performance of a leading edge optical transport system.