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This paper represents the technical core of a precompetitive consortium formed by AT&T, DEC and MIT to study the technology, architecture and applications of wide-band alloptical networks of local to national (or international) extent. This effort is currently partially sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Sections I and I1 of this paper provide a general introduction to all-optical networks and discuss some proposed applications. Sections 111, IV and V cover the architecture, technology and test-bed portions of our effort.

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Two critical components, needed for optical networks based on frequency division multiplexing and frequency reuse technologies, are presented. One is a fast tunable laser, yielding 24 discrete frequencies regularly spaced by 40 GHz around 1.53 ktm. The laser can be switched randomly in less than 8 ns among these frequencies. Frequency routing of a 3 Gb/s bit stream in 10 ns-packets between 10 different destinations has been demonstrated with this laser. The second component is a broadband wavelength shifter capable of switching multigigabit data between optical frequencies in the 1.5-pm region. The device is tunable, cascadable, provides conversion gain and is nearly polarization insensitive. Data degradation after wavelength shifting is negligible. Such a device provides the means of reusing the limited set of frequencies given by the lasers and thus of realizing large size networks.