In the last twenty years, optical networks have witnessed recurrent changes in their management and control architecture. In this paper, we present a historical timeline and a future perspective of the evolution of optical network management and control deployed for Wavelength Switched Optical Networks (WSON), Elastic Optical Networks (EON) and (multilayer) Data Center Networks.

Early implementations of WSON envisaged a static and centralized provisioning approach supported by the Management Plane only. Gradually, the requirement of accommodating more network dynamicity in WSON, and later in EON, pushed the adoption of a distributed control, mostly supported by vendor-dependent implementations of the Generalized MultiProtocol Label Switching (GMPLS) protocol suite. The drawbacks of the fully distributed GMPLS-based control, such as resource contention, suboptimal resource usage, and complex computations (e.g., to account for physical layer constraints) showed the necessity to bring back some of the routing/provisioning functions to a centralized Path Computation Element (PCE) capable of accounting for e.g. physical impairments and interworking with GMPLS.

The centralized control then gained its momentum and brought a radical change in network control, through the separation of data and control plane introduced by the paradigm of Software Defined Networking (SDN). Such an approach has been gradually extended to optical network control.

The paper, eventually, presents the most advanced control techniques, namely the intent-based networking, the observe/decide/act state-based approach providing for autonomic optical network and the (closed-loop) zero-touch service management approach. Advanced traffic conditioning techniques are also detailed, namely the in-band telemetry and the exploitation of Programming Protocol-Independent Packet Processors (P4) language capabilities as well as solutions tailored for data center networks: all of them are still in a research stage and to be integrated within future optical network architectures.

在过去的二十年中，光网络的管理和控制架构不断发生变化。在本文中，我们介绍了为波长交换光网络 (WSON)、弹性光网络 (EON) 和（多层）数据中心网络部署的光网络管理和控制演进的历史时间表和未来展望。

WSON 的早期实现设想了一种仅由管理平面支持的静态和集中式供应方法。逐渐地，在 WSON 和后来的 EON 中适应更多网络动态的要求推动了分布式控制的采用，主要由通用多协议标签交换 (GMPLS) 协议套件的供应商相关实现支持。基于完全分布式 GMPLS 的控制的缺点，例如资源争用、次优资源使用和复杂计算（例如，考虑物理层约束）表明有必要将一些路由/供应功能带回集中路径计算元素 (PCE) 能够考虑例如物理损伤和与 GMPLS 的互通。

通过软件定义网络 (SDN) 范式引入的数据和控制平面的分离，集中控制获得了动力，并带来了网络控制的根本变化。这种方法已经逐渐扩展到光网络控制。

最后，本文提出了最先进的控制技术，即基于意图的网络、提供自主光网络的观察/决定/行为基于状态的方法和（闭环）零接触服务管理方法。还详细介绍了高级流量调节技术，即带内遥测和开发独立于编程协议的数据包处理器 (P4) 语言功能以及为数据中心网络量身定制的解决方案：所有这些都仍处于研究阶段，集成到未来的光网络架构中。