switching technologies to one more amenable to data (NG-SDH) and these
changes are now implemented. In conjunction with these near term changes,
there is a strong move toward carrier-grade Ethernet, in particular 100 G Ethernet
on a single channel, and it is likely that this trend will come to dominate. Other
immediate changes required are to move toward a more dynamic network where
circuits can be established and torn down in minutes rather than hours or days, and
such architectures are represented in the standardized ASON architect ure, where
requests from users activate a control plane which initiates automatic node switch-
ing. These two changes represent desired changes in the current circuit-switched
network, but the accelerating changes in