An Overview of Optical Control Plane and Novel Unified Control Plane Architecture for IP/WDM Networks

The involvement of the optical communications in the past two decennary to provide the resilience against potential fiber or node failures, to provide intelligence required for efficient point-and-click provisioning, and to provide transmission capacities to higher transport levels. Due to the emergence of optical network elements, which makes it possible, that carries the intelligence required to efficiently managing such networks. The deployments in the recent years of Wavelength Division Multiplexed (WDM) which is based on the optical transport networks have met the defy of accommodating the phenomenal extension of the IP data traffic while providing novel services that are the restoration and rapid provisioning of very high bandwidth on demand and bandwidth circuits (Ellinas et al. 2011).