STARNET: An Integrated Services Broadband Optical Network with Physical Star Topology

We propose a new broadband local area network, STARNET, based on a physical passive star topology. STARNET implements both a packet network and a highspeed WDM circuit interconnect, which are simultaneously available to every node of the network and operate independently. As a result, STARNET supports very diverse types of traffic in an optimal way. Each node requires only two lasers and its structure permits to effectively achieve frequency stabilization for the whole network. An effort toward an experimental demonstration of a 4- node, 3 Gbits per node, FDDI-compatible at the packet network level STARNET is currently in progress at Optical Communication Research Laboratory, Stanford University.