Three major thrusts will be discussed relating to the exciting area of wavelength-division-multiplexed (WDM) communications, a technique involving the simultaneous transmission of several channels on different wavelengths down the same fiber. The first part of the presentation will provide an overview of the revolution in optical communications caused by WDM and optical amplifiers. The second section is aimed at dynamically compensating channel-degrading effects in reconfigurable systems. These time-dependent degrading effects will occur since next-generation WDM systems will route signals through slowly-reconfigurable network paths, allowing several parameters to vary. Therefore, it is imperative to provide robust dynamic schemes for the compensation of issues such as unequal channel powers, EDFA transients, and chromatic and polarization-mode dispersion. The third thrust is aimed at enhancing the functionality of future packet-switched optical networks, in which each WDM packet can be actively routed through a network based on wavelength and packet information. Significant functions that can be enabled by high-speed optical switches include: contention resolution, header replacement, and synchronization.