Optical networks comprising active and passive, digital and analog electronics hardware, firmware, middleware, software, and active and passive optics hardware including switches, routers, bridges, hubs, adapters, interface cards and modules, access cards and modules, optical transport, single mode fiber, multimode optical fiber, optical waveguides, connectors, packet processors, network management, control, and administration hardware and software; device drivers; field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), application specific integrated circuits (ASICs), application specific optical circuits (ASOCs), planar lightwave circuits (PLCs), photonic integrated circuits (PICs), micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS), amplification systems and subsystems, filtering systems and subsystems, wavelength conversion, routing, and switching devices and control software, network, system, and subsystem monitoring hardware and software, high availability systems, high reliability systems, redundant and fault-tolerant systems, scalable systems, media access protocols, network management and administration protocols, and data encoding hardware and software and computer network management software