Internet traffic (webpages, e-mail, ...) is chopped up in packets, and transported much like the postal system. However, routers are not able to keep up with the growing volumes, making the per packet way of working very costly, especially in the international core networks. Optical technologies can help out, but they waste a lot of transmission capacity. Although this transmission cost has dropped drastically, it still is very expensive. Therefore, we developed a hybrid architecture, Overspill Routing in Optical Networks (ORION), combining the strengths of two existing, tradional systems. Previously we studied ORION by simplified simulation. To validate these results we built an ORION network as close to reality as possible. It is based on an electronic router platform which mimics the behaviour of an ORION node in every functional aspect. This allowed more accurate results and validation of earlier work, as well as quality measurements of live (multimedia) traffic. Keywords— Overspill Routing in Optical Networks, Broadband Networks