The Optical Future

There's two ways to go about picking the likely winners in the race to roll out optical networking technologies - follow the herd, or follow your head.

If the latter course appeals to you, then read on. Light Reading has prepared a guide to the future of optical networking, with the goal of helping people see the way forward - towards the time when light based technologies promise to transform the Internet, blowing away bandwidth bottlenecks and almost eliminating delays.

Our guide tackles the subject in two ways.

First, we look at the fundamental reasons why optical networking technologies are so hot. In particular, we examine the architecture of today's telecom networks and point to the specific problems that carriers face as a result of the explosion of traffic on the Internet. (see Today's Problems)

Next, we show how today's optical networking developments could alter that architecture, and how that could help carriers avoid a crisis (see Tomorrow's Promises). We also identify developments that promise to deliver a myriad of new, high performance services to users, at very low prices.

Our second way of tackling the subject takes a deeper look at the optical networking technologies themselves. We start by categorizing them under the following headings:

In each category, we explain the technology, identify key issues, point to key vendors and hot startups, and provide links to related articles in Light Reading.

The upshot is a map of the new world of optical networking - something that will help carriers, vendors and investors put developments into context and assess (or express) their significance.

One other point: the best travel guides are updated regularly by feedback from people on the ground. The same thing goes for our guide. Please send any comments or additional information to editors@lightreading.com so that we can keep everybody up to date.

—Peter Heywood, international editor, Light Reading http://www.lightreading.com