Book excerpt: Optical communication networks have played and will continue to play a prominent role in the development and deployment of communication network infrastructures. New optical systems and protocols will enable next generation optical networks to meet the diverse requirements from a wide range of new applications and services. Optical networks have evolved to become more flexible, intelligent and reliable. New optical switching architectures, technologies, and sophisticated control and management protocols have already enabled optical networks to be used not only in the core but also the metropolitan and access networks. The widespread deployment of optical communication networks will continue to have a big impact on our future lifestyle. Current Research Progress of Optical Networks is aimed to provide an overview on recent research progresses in optical networking with proposed solutions, survey and tutorials on various issues and topics in optical network technologies and services.