The continuing maturation and declining costs of optical technologies has resulted in current and future optical networks having several optical domains with different granularities; each domain controlled by an independent and autonomous service provider. Now consider the emerging applications, which require high-bandwidth and interconnection with multiple applications across multiple domains. These kinds of applications necessitate the critical need for intelligent optical network control plane which is aware and can compute end-to-end paths based several domain specific and technology specific parameters. Standardized interworking across various multi-granularity network interfaces and interoperability among vendor’s equipment/domains are crucial to provision end-to-end services and establish cost effective network evolution path. Current optical networks are based on multiple technologies and control solutions, standard and propriety, making inter-domain and inter-carrier interworking difficult posing several new requirements, for example, the routing process needs to know the extent of each domain and the granularities on each link within the domains and should be sensitive to the costs associated in traversing through other domains; the domain specific information sharing and dissemination; performance monitoring across multiple domains; fault-localization and reporting; security; billing and accounting; control plane standardization; efficient inter-domain routing protocols such as OBGP/PNNI; SLA negotiation and guarantee across multiple domains; interoperability issues; etc. Needless to say that, by having an interoperable and standard control plane across mutli domain optical networks, carriers can benefit from cost effective selection of network elements, platforms, and multiple vendor solutions resulting in faster deployment and reduced CAPEX and OPEX. To promote research and address these challenges many leading private and government agencies have funded numerous projects across the world. Clearly, these newer research initiatives will play a crucial “prove-in” role for emergent multi-domain optical networks, and their importance cannot be understated. This special issue will serve to share the collective experiences of researchers, industry professionals, practicing engineers, network operators, and equipment vendors in the area of multi-domain optical networking space.

Scope of Contributions

This feature topic aims to consolidate and disseminate the recent developments and advances in the area of multi-domain optical networks. The articles describing original research and development, deployment issues and challenges, experimental results and applications as well as survey articles related to multi-domain optical networks are solicited. In particular, we solicit papers in the area of multi-domain optical networks focusing on topics including but not limited to:

• Multi-domain optical networks (opaque, transparent, translucent) architecture and design
• Virtual topology design and scheduling of traffic demands
• Plug-and-play optical network configuration
• On-demand layer 1 network services
• Path computation element (PCE) for multi-domain networks
• Efficient RWA algorithms for service provisioning with inter-domain SLA requirements
• Protection/restoration schemes including performance monitoring, fault-location, and reporting
• Reliable and diverse interconnection of multiple core networks and SONET/SDH rings
• Traffic grooming and sub-wavelength service provisioning
• The role of GMPLS and ASON control planes extensions and standardization
• Interaction between control and data planes and intra-domain and inter-domain protocols
• OBGP/PNNI, gateway and multi-granularity issues
• Impact of information sharing and heterogeneous components/systems on service provisioning
• Physical layer impairment aware routing
• Inter-domain and inter-layer traffic analysis, traffic shaping, and traffic engineering
• Alien wavelength monitoring, operation, administration, management, and scalability issues
• Optical layer security, E2E authentication, authorization, and accounting
• The present and future application scenarios, such as lambda grids, VPNs, etc.,
• Billing, accounting, and interoperability issues and business models
• Socio-economical issues from vendors and service providers point of view

Manuscript Submission Deadline: December 1, 2007
Acceptance Notification: February 15, 2008
Final Manuscript Due: March 15, 2008
Publication Date: June 2008

Authors must follow the IEEE Communications Magazine guidelines regarding the manuscript and its format. For details, please refer to the "Information for Authors" at the IEEE Communications Magazine Website at http://www.comsoc.org/pubs/commag/sub_guidelines.html. Submission will be done through IEEE Manuscript Central: http://commag-ieee.manuscriptcentral.com. Choose "June2008/Multi-Domain Optical Networks: Issues and Challenges" from the "Select a Topic or Series Drop Down Menu" in the IEEE Manuscript Central. Please submit no later than 1st December 2007. Accepted papers will also be included in Communications Interactive (CI), the online version of Communications Magazine.

Feature Topic Editors

For additional information about this Feature Topic, please contact the Guest Editors listed below:

Chava Vijaya Saradhi
Department of Broadband and Wireless Communications
Create-Net, Italy
Email: saradhi@ieee.org

Byrav Ramamurthy
Department of Computer Science and Engineering
University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Email: byrav@cse.unl.edu

Dominic Schupke
Nokia Siemens Networks
Research, Technology and Platforms
Email: dominic.schupke@nsn.com

Eiji Oki
NTT Japan
Network Service Systems Laboratories
Email: oki.eiji@lab.ntt.co.jp