On user-participated and service-oriented optical networks

ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) networks are moving to support data, voice, video converged triple play, service-oriented intelligence of resource sharing, reconfiguration, and user-participated DIY (Do It Yourself) on virtual private network control and management. To accommodate these amazing features, future optical network should provide intelligent control and management for reliable transmission, which may employ user-participated and dedicated end-to-end lightpath such as the UCLP of CANARIE CANET4, also highly dynamic operation facilities for distributed multi-domain interconnecting. This paper forces on challenges and potential enabling technologies for user-participated and service-oriented optical networks. The topics involved include network virtualization, service model, architecture, and implementation, user-participated network interface.