It was clear as the new millennium began that a remarkable revolution in information services was overtaking our society. Communication, which was confined to narrowband voice signals, demanded a higher-quality visual, audio, and data content. Every aspect of interaction (whether business-to-business, entertainment and social demands, government, or academia) increasingly relies on rapid and reliable communications networks. The Internet alone thrust millions of individual users into a new world of information and technology. The telecommunications industry struggled to keep up with these demands. All predictions that current fiber capacities would be adequate for our needs into the new century have proven wrong. What was once a voice network growing at 4 percent per year is now a data-centric network growing at 30 percent (and more) per year. To meet the demands, the carriers sought help from the manufacturers and the standards committees. They were faced with obsolescence of their entire network infrastructure or a meltdown of the network. The committees went to work looking for a new way to handle this phenomenal growth and unrelenting demand.