Abstract
Ring networks that employ WDM technologies will be a key application among various transport network applications to support future high-speed multi-media services. This paper categorizes WDM ring networks as per the optical channel schemes and ring architectures such as uni-directional/bi directional and 2-fiber/4-fiber ring. The protection architecture and network supervisioning capability are taken into consideration for comparison among different types of ring. The multiple fiber ring architectures and their node architecture are also presented. Finally application range for each type of ring are presented.
