Optical networks have been in commercial deployment since the early 1980s as a result of advances in optical, photonic, and material technologies. Although the initial deployment was based on silica fiber with a single wavelength modulated at low data rates, it was quickly demonstrated that fiber can deliver much more bandwidth than any other transmission medium, twisted pair wire, coaxial cable, or wireless. Since then, the optical network evolved to include more exciting technologies, gratings, optical filters, optical multiplexers, and optical amplifiers so that today a single fiber can transport an unprecedented aggregate data rate that exceeds Tbps, and this is not the upper limit yet. Thus, the fiber optic network has been the network of choice, and it is expected to remain so for many generations to come, for both synchronous and asynchronous payloads; voice, data, video, interactive video, games, music, text, and more.

In the last few years, we have also witnessed an increase in network attacks as a result of store and forward computer-based nodes. These attacks have many malicious objectives: harvest someone else’s data, impersonate another user, cause denial of service, destroy files, and more. As a result, a new field in communication is becoming important, communication networks and information security. In fact, the network architect and system designer is currently challenged to include enhanced features such as intruder detection, service restoration and countermeasures, intruder avoidance, and so on. In all, the next generation optical network is intelligent and able to detect and outsmart malicious intruders. This is the first book, to the best of my knowledge, which bridges two disjoint topics, optical networks and network security. It provides a comprehensive treatment of the next generation optical network and a comprehensive treatment of cryptographic algorithms, the quantum optical network, including advanced topics such as teleportation, and how detection and countermeasure strategies may be used. Therefore, we believe that this book differentiates from many others and presents a holistic approach to the treatment of secure optical networks, including fiber to the home (FTTH) and free space optical (FSO). This book deserves my thanks and appreciation because it came into being after the persistence of Mr. Jason Ward, the expert “literal” eyes of Mrs. Caitlin Womersley, and the many management and production personnel of Springer US anonymous to me. I hope that the next generation optical network will be intelligent, and when using wireless technologies at the edge, it will enable unlimited and secure communication multi-services with a single and portable device to anyone, anyplace, anytime at low cost.