 At a first glance, it could seem that ASON and GMPLS are two competing standards and that only one of them will prevail with time, but this is completely false. As a matter of fact, ASON is not a protocol suite, even if it gives a lot of recommendations about protocols, but it is more an architecture and a framework in which the protocols of the new control plane Telecommunication Networks have to fit. Thus, it is well possible to fit GMPLS protocols in the ASON architecture, even if this is not completely free of work since the two standards were born independently. The work of fitting GMPLS into the ASON architecture is ongoing in another industry standardization group: the Optical Internetworking Forum (OIF). The OIF is issuing a series of documents called implementation agreements (AI) [2] whose role is exactly to fit GMPLS into the ASON architecture pointing out where there are difficulties, correc- tions to be applied to existing GMPLS protocols or different interpretations of the ASON architecture. Moreover, OIF is promoting a wide experimentation activity whose goal is to set up test beds for the new control plane that verify the functionalities of its parts. This is a very important activity since, if there is a sort of progressive experimental verification of the functions of the new control plane, they can be introduced gradually into the carrier net- works, thereby distributing the costs over a long time and allowing the new procedures to be introduced progressively. This chapter is divided into three parts: in the first we will analyze the ASON archi- tecture, in the second we will review the GMPLS protocol suite, and in the third we will discuss how a multilayer network based on an integrated control plane can be designed and optimized. 8.2 ASON Architecture 8.2.1 ASON Network Model Historically the control plane accompanies the packet-switched networks, which are not supposed to have a rich management plane as the transport networks. The first point to solve if a control plane is to be developed S