Transport networks are facing new challenges and opportunities because of the explosive growth of data traffic. Besides having to meet the ever-increasing bandwidth demand, transport networks need to provide new functionalities for the support of data applications. For example, they should provide elastic data pipes which guarantee minimum bandwidths but also allow expansion when extra bandwidth is available. They should support instant and automatic discovery and configuration of layer 3 nodes which, traditionally, is possible only for LANs. Enhanced transport systems with inherent packet multiplexing can meet these challenges. It will be natural to use Internet protocols and technologies to implement these packet transport systems, and thereby reuse much of the existing Internet infrastructure already widely deployed.
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