An Experimental Multi-Gb/s WDM Broadband Network

摘要

STARNET is an optical broadband network architecture based on a physical passive star topology. Over a single physical network, STARNET offers all users both a moderatespeed packet switched subnetwork and a high-speed WDM circuit switched subnetwork. Based on these two data transport facilities, several topological and protocol solutions are available to the users. As a result, STARNET supports traffic of widely different speed and continuity characteristics.This paper describes an ongoing experimental effort aimed at the realization of a STARNET prototype at the Optical Communication Research Laboratory of Stanford University.The prototype nodes are FDDI and SONET OC-48 data rate compatible. The first four network layers will be fully implemented.