Although the Automatically Switched Optical Networks (ASON) specifications strongly recommend a hierarchical network architecture for these networks, this is still an open issue. The hierarchical network concept involves several mechanisms mainly related with signalling and routing, such as the aggregation scheme, the dissemination process, the updating policy and the routing algorithms. The ex...

In the ITU-T ASON architecture, the control plane is responsible for providing intelligence to the network. The GMPLS paradigm pleads for a separation between the control plane and the forwarding plane. If the control plane is deployed disjoint from the forwarding plane, recovery mechanisms to ensure its proper operation are required. In this paper, on one hand, a quasi-associated mode backup c...

In this paper the current trends in the optical networking including the physical components, technologies and control architectures are discussed. The possible interaction schemes and implementation models of the automatic communication between applications and network as well as between ASON/GMPLS based network domains are proposed. Finally, the related research activities based on simulation...