Internet traffic has been growing quickly for many years, despite adverse economic conditions and this growth will continue in the future. To cope with this evolution, the cost of today's network solutions is still too high.In addition, in line with the EC goal of reducing the overall emissions, energy efficiency should be widely improved, using whenever possible optics instead of electronics where only transport is required.Moreover, due to the unpredictable traffic increase, flexible bandwidth management has to be used instead of fixed allocated bandwidth.For these reasons, the key requirements of innovative ultra-high bandwidth networks refer to scalability, flexibility, assurance of end-to-end quality of service and energy efficiency, beside reduction of total cost of ownership.In the data plane, current equipment and network architectures still provide limited scalability, are not cost-effective and do not properly guarantee end-to-end quality of service.In the control plane, the open issue is to define an end-to-end control structure that allows different technologies and domains to inter-work efficiently, incorporating virtualization of network resources.Based on these rationales, STRONGEST's main objective is:To design and demonstrate an evolutionary ultra-high capacity multilayer transport network, compatible with Gbit/s access rates, based on optimized integration of Optical and Packet nodes, and equipped with a multi-domain, multi-technology control plane. This network will offer:High scalability and flexibilityGuaranteed end-to-end performance and survivabilityIncreased energy efficiencyReduced total cost of ownershipFeasibility studies and experimental implementation and demonstration of prototypes will be key activities, as well.STRONGEST will also feed the collaboration with other Projects and the submission of specific contributions to ITU-T, OIF, IETF, thus reinforcing European position in standardization bodies.