The last two decades has seen an explosion in telecommunication bandwidth, a trend which has never ceased. Another current trend is the growing concern for the environmental footprint humankind is leaving due to various industries. The Internet traffic grows roughly by 60% per year, and internet servers today consume about 2% of the total global electric power consumption corresponding to a CO2 emission approaching 1% of the total emission caused by human beings. These trends have made it very clear that it is imperative to develop new technologies that can accommodate for the ever growing bandwidth demand and reduce power consumption. The key issue for modern telecommunication engineers and designers is no longer cost per bit, but power per bit. Using optical methods for carrying data and processing the data, without opto-to-electrical conversion, so-called all-optical methods, may help in this respect. This project will aim at developing an all-optical power-efficient communication scenario based on serial optical communications. In serial communications, fewer components will in general be used, and with ultra-short pulses, very high bit rates will become available. Historically, increases in the serial data rate have lead to cost savings, due to reduced complexity in management, reduced power consumption and a reduced number of components. We believe this will hold true, and will explore the fundamental physical limits of serial communications to reach the ultimate serial bit rate, and develop network scenarios to fully take advantage of the serial nature of the data, whilst maintaining a focus on limiting the power consumption. In particular we want to design network scenarios for optical serial multi-Tbit/s data and additionally build a 1 Tbit/s optical Ethernet scenario. We will develop stable ultra-fast switches , and mature them for a variety of functionalities, eventually leading to a validation of ultra-high-speed serial optical communication systems.