An optical network, which includes edge and switching nodes, optically communicate information formatted into statistically multiplexed control and data bursts and/or metadata that are framed within Wide Area Network Interface Sublayer (WIS) frames for 10 Gb/s Ethernet according to the IEEE 802.3ae Standard. Frames with control bursts are transmitted prior to frames with related data bursts to configure optical switches in selected switching nodes so that the frames with the data bursts do not require O-E-O conversion. Another optical network uses frames that are data-rate and format compatible with the OC-192 synchronous optical network (SONET) transmission format. The ingress node to the optical network inserts the MAC address of the egress node rather than the IP address of the data destination. For both networks, mapping table information is exchanged in the optical network in an out-of-band network.