A user tunable access lightwave network

A new approach to reconfiguration management of a wavelength-multiplexed multihop lightwave network is proposed. Unlike earlier approaches, this «User Tunable Access Lightwave Network» employs a fixed connection diagram among the multihop access stations but allows each user to select its «home» access station by means of a wavelength agile optical transmitter, capable of retuning on a time scale comparable with the setup time of a new virtual connection. By so doing, it becomes possible to effect a reconfiguration with minimal impact upon existing virtual connections. A traffic-driven heuristic is presented which can rapidly adapt to time-varying traffic patterns and which can be implemented on a distributed basis within the multihop access stations, with each station requiring knowledge of only its own generated traffic