The surge in demand for access technologies such as cable modems, xDSL, and wireless data suggests that information will be the most valuable commodity in this new millennium. Eventually, data will constitute 99% of the content sent over telecommunications networks. The demand for information will require carriers to apply new methods and technologies to migrate their existing voice networks to data networks. An intelligent optical core using wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) will meet a carrier's needs for scale, provisioning, and restoration and will increase overall efficiency. The overall efficiency of tomorrow's network will be a reflection of today's optical transport protocol. Currently, Lucent Technologies' WaveStar™ LambdaRouter and its optical network navigator system (ONNS) enable a distributed network-wide control plane that specifically addresses the current core network requirements for wavelength provisioning and restoration. The ONNS is based on and adopts mature Internet protocol (IP)-centric protocols, and it provides effective traffic restoration and traffic engineering capabilities in the optical network to satisfy a customer's optical layer needs. Furthermore, it is designed to facilitate control plane integration with data networks and to have the flexibility to accommodate future network-related needs as they arise. Therefore, Lucent's LambdaRouter (with its distributed control plane) is the appropriate solution for controlling optical data networks today and in the future.