lambdaMON - A Passive Monitoring Facility for DWDM Optical Networks

This paper presents lambdaMON a novel approach to passive monitoring of very high performance optical networks based on dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM). The approach offers very attractive cost/benefit scaling properties, which are further refined by introducing state-of-the-art transparent fiber switching equipment. The rapid pace at which we intend to implement lambdaMONs opens new opportunities to apply passive monitoring facilities for debugging, troubleshooting and performance analysis of novel protocols and applications. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first attempt at designing a passive monitoring facility for optical networks. We report detailed architectural parameters, measurements and experience from laboratory tests and initial field deployment.