ABSTRACT
Photonic technologies are critical to realizing the future backbone network. Recent progress in wavelength division multiplexing has led to a breakthrough in network performance. The optical technology requirements to ensure application to the backbone and those related to the access network are quite different. Networks carrying huge transmission loads must ensure survivability, since even a very short outage will cause a large amount of information to be lost. IP over glass is a link layer protocol specially designed for the high speed and bandwidth efficient transmission of IPv4 and IPv6 datagrams over optical fibers. The operation of each approach is described and their performances are extensively evaluated and compared.
