"Once vendors support more protocols, acceptance of Layer 3 switching should increase dramatically, " said Eric Pylko, global infrastructure coordinator at Eastman-Kodak Corp. in Rochester, N.

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Software-defined networks will provide some of this flexibility by separating the control function from data forwarding, but there are additional capabilities emerging, he says, such as intelligent switching of wavelengths, the ability to mix dedicated bandwidth with best-efforts networks, and application layer network traffic optimization, e.g.

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