- 1 - Transporting IP Packets over Light: A Survey Lisong Xu, Harry Perros, George Rouskas Department of Computer Science North Carolina State University Raleigh, NC 27695-7534 {lxu2, hp, rouskas}@eos.ncsu.edu Abstract Optical networks appear to be the solution of choice for providing a faster networking infrastructure that can meet the explosive growth of the Internet. One of the key issues that needs to be addressed is how optical networks can be used to carry IP traffic. In this paper, we survey some of the techniques that have been proposed in the literature for transporting IP traffic over an optical network. Specifically, we survey techniques for IP over SONET, optical packet switch architectures, and optical burst switching.