The Early Stage: MPlS
Each OXC includes the equivalent of MPLS-capable Label-Switching Router (LSR)
- MPLS control plane is implemented in each OXC
Lambda LSPs (control plane entities) are considered similarly to MPLS Label-Switched Paths (LSPs)
- Selection of wavelengths (or lambdas) and OXC ports is considered as similar to the label selection using MPLS
MPLS signaling protocols (such as RSVP-TE, CR-LDP) are adapted for Lambda LSP setup/delete/etc.
IGPs (such as OSPF, ISIS) with “optical” traffic-engineering extensions used for topology/resource discovery using IP address space (no “reachability extensions”)