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Long distance gigabit networks are routinely used to transfer terabyte files using a variety of high performance transport protocols. Several recent bulk transfer experiments have demonstrated throughputs in excess of 90% of NIC transfer rates. Some experiments have used end-to-end “lightpaths” – provisioned, dedicated, point-to-point optical circuits.
Dedicated lightpaths have a number of advantages – most are protocol agnostic, many can be implemented as relatively inexpensive overlays in carrier networks, and some can be provisioned by users [1]. However, lightpaths have several technological limitations: (i) scalability – lightpaths are point to point, and users have a few tens of wavelengths (at most) available to them even in DWDM networks; (ii) efficiency – lightpaths reserve but rarely use all of the bandwidth available to them. Most lightpath architectures cannot share wavelengths.