ire departments, helped launch new companies, and provided strategic research and analysis to help com- panies obtain additional funding. Mr. Johnson's experience in telecommu- nications has spanned across many companies in several different areas, including those of ILEC, RBOC, IXC, CLEC, start-up optical carrier, start- up optical equipment vendor, and multiple business and technology con- sulting firms. Mr. Johnson also currently holds a position on the board of directors of a small business and technology consulting company based in the Northeast. Emma Minoli Ms. Emma Minoli is CEO and Founder of Red Hill Con- sulting, a high-tech consultancy specializing in the area of Voice Over IP, multimedia, and e-commerce technologies. Red Hill Consulting also focuses on marketing and PR/advocacy for these technologies. During the past 6 years clients have included companies such as AT&T, J. D. Edwards, Chase Manhattan Bank, InfoPort Communications Group, and EtherCarrier Communications. Ms. Minoli has co-authored several books including The Telecommunications Handbook-Digital Video section (CRC Press/IEEE Press), 1999; Delivering Voice over IP Networks (John Wiley & Sons), 1998; Delivering Voice over Frame Relay and ATM (John Wiley & Sons), 1998; and The Web Commerce Technology Handbook (McGraw-Hill), 1997. CHAPTER Advances and Opportunities in Next- Generation SONET and Other Optical Architectures Chapter 1 In spite of some temporary slowdowns at the beginning of this new decade end-user organizations continue to have increasing bandwidth needs for intranets, connectivity to backup and storage sites, access to the Internet, and multimedia applications. As these organizations deploy local area networks (LANs) comprising switched segments based on 100-, 1,000- or 10,000-Mbps technology, there is a correlated need for broadband wide area network (WAN) services, metropolitan area network (MAN) services, and access net- work services.1 As a rule of thumb, the WAN/access requirement is equal to the aggregate LAN speed divid