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In this work we benchmark through appropriate performance metrics the legacy Optical Circuit Switching (OCS) mode in an optical network of nodes following a mesh topology interconnection vs. a clustered optical network architecture (CANON). The results demonstrate that the static reservation of WDM channels, as used in IP/WDM schemes, is severely limiting scalability, since it cannot efficiently adapt to the dynamic traffic fluctuations that are frequently observed in today's networks, while the hierarchical clustered architecture with dynamic reservations can exploit statistical multiplexing efficient grooming traffic at appropriate granularity levels leading to improved performance and resource utilization. We quantify through computer simulation the performance gains and the smoothing of traffic profile achieved when implementing the CANON architecture as an upgrade of existing infrastructure by using the reference network of a European operator. The effect of traffic grooming, when employing CANON and its impact on performance and cost are evaluated using a national backbone network as a case study. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]