We propose an all-optical networking solution for a wide area network (WAN)
based on the notion of multipoint-to-multipoint lightpaths that, for short, we
call "multipaths". A multipath concentrates the traffic of a group of source
nodes on a wavelength channel using an adapted MAC protocol and multicasts this
traffic to a group of destination nodes that extract their own data from the
confluent stream. The proposed network can be built using existing components
and appears less complex and more efficient in terms of energy consumption than
alternatives like OPS and OBS. The paper presents the multipath architecture
and compares its energy consumption to that of a classical router-based ISP
network. A flow-aware dynamic bandwidth allocation algorithm is proposed and
shown to have excellent performance in terms of throughput and delay