The MPLS WG Archive

["Alec Myers" <alec.myers@w5.co.uk>]

Bearing in mind:

1. The crudity of pure optical memory (fibre delay lines)
2. The lack of pure-optical logic
3. The lack of a fast (packet rate) wavelength switching technology
4. The delay in line clock-recovery between differing transmitter/receivers
pairs at the start of each packet
5. The difficulty in dynamically recovering from non-linear effects in
optical paths whose length varies per-packet

I wouldn't expect to see a real FULLY optical switch any time soon.

There are a few papers around that describe possible control schemes, but
they are all rather crude, and make only passing reference to MPLS. If
you're interested I can forward the references.

-A


----- Original Message -----
From: "Darren Freeland" <darren.freeland@alten.co.uk>
To: <mpls@UU.NET>
Cc: <ip-optical@lists.bell-labs.com>
Sent: Tuesday, February 06, 2001 2:24 PM
Subject: G-MPLS on all-optical switches?


> Hi,
>
> Can any vendor give me some information on exactly how they intend to
> run G-MPLS on FULLY optical switches?  For the control signals, will you
> use optical splitters or the like to tap off some of the lightpath
> inband (amplifying to compensate for the power loss), or will you use an
> outband network?
>
> Any info much appreciated ....
>
> Darren.
>
>