ry Solutions (ANSI/ATIS) Telecommunications Industry Association Fiber Optic (TIA FO) Full Service Access Network (FSAN) Bellcore/Telcordia European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) Optical Internetworking Forum (OIF) Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) All of the activity by the leading bodies of the telecommunications and technology industry is certainly justified. Optical Ethernet and metropoli- tan networking companies have recently received billions in investment capital. During 2000 and 2001, venture capitalists funneled over $3 billion into 37 startups in the optical Ethernet space.34 The biggest portion of this funding (about $1.67 billion) has gone to companies developing metropolitan area networking equipment for use by enterprise customers and carriers. Another $1.54 billion has gone to service providers specializing in optical Ethernet connectivity. A smaller portion (about $415 million) has gone to firms supplying components to equipment vendors. Much of the investment in optical Ethernet has come from leading firms, such as Goldman Sachs & Co., Intel Capital, New Enterprise Associates, and WorldView Technology Partners. Each of these firms has backed at least five separate companies. Intel has been the most active in this realm, having invested in seven sepa- rate optical Ethernet or metro optical transport companies. 1.3 Course of Investigation In this book we examine traditional-but-fast-improving as well as evolving architectures. Architectures, technologies, and services for high-end com- mercial applications are explored in detail. A companion book by these authors, Ethernet-Based Metro Area Networks, lays the groundwork for con- sidering SONET-in its traditional and next-generation forms-in contrast to and comparison with Ethernet-based wide area architectures such as VLANs, Rapid Spanning Tree Algorithm, RPRs, 10 GbE, and SO on. Our Advances and Opportunities in Next-Generation SONET purpose is in part to evaluate the lat