Advances in IP-optical networking for IP quad-play traffic and services

As quad-play (data, voice, video and mobile communications) and high-performance computing (HPC) traffic are proliferating and converging on to public (Internet), private, enterprise or service providers’ IP networking infrastructure, there is need for new generation of networking infrastructure and relevant management of the enhanced infrastructure. This new generation network will include converged architectures of IP and Optical networking (IP–Optical). Optical networks are not to be anymore considered “peddlers of terabytes” but an intelligent and integral part of the overall network infrastructure. In this intelligent IP–Optical architecture, the traditional client–server model will transition to the controlplane based network with support for, among other features, automated end-to-end traffic engineering, comprehensive QoS and IP-over-DWDM. For the advanced capabilities of optical networks to flourish, the research community has to fundamentally rethink current architectures and protocols. This special issue covering invited and peer-reviewed papers, addresses this rethinking precisely, with promise to bring fundamental changes in optical networking architecture, protocol and management. We are happy to introduce four peer-reviewed and six invited articles that represent recent advances in the area of intelligent optical control planes for future IP–optical networking, including new research topics and the development of testbeds and applications. The first four articles address novel concepts and architectures from access to core topology. The paper “Light-Mesh—A Pragmatic Optical Access Network Architecture for IP-Centric Service Oriented Communication”, proposes a new light-mesh access network topology and related methods. The paper “Compact Photonic Gateway for Dynamic Path Control Using Acousto-optic Tunable Filter” proposes