Research into all optical network(AON) technology has been ongoing over the past decade, and new features are constantly being developed. The advantages of AON include large-bandwidth provisioning, lowlatency transmission and low energy consumption. The basic concept underlying AON is transmission of data signals entirely through the optical domain from source to destination nodes, with no optical-electrical-optical(O-E-O) conversion at intermediate nodes. The technologies used to implement AON have undergone a series of evolutions, which encompass time division multiplexing(TDM), frequency division multiplexing(FDM), and space division multiplexing(SDM). Multi-dimensional AON(MD-AON), which leads the trend of AON’s future architecture, provides a vibrant state for emerging applications such as cloud computing and Internet of Things(Io T). In this article, we review the evolution of AON architectures based on the different all optical switching and multiplexing technologies(i.e., TDM, FDM, and SDM), which is one of the main areas of focus in this article.The other main area is detailed discussion of implementations such as data plane and control plane technologies as well as resource optimization technologies for realizing AON. We also introduce several AON testbeds with their compositions and functions, and some potential application scenarios that can be implemented based on these testbeds The advantages of AON include large-bandwidth provisioning, low latency transmission and low energy consumption. The basic concept underlying AON is transmission of of data signals entirely through the optical domain from source to destination nodes, with no optical-electrical-optical (OEO) conversion at intermediate nodes. The technologies used to implement AON have undergone a series of evolutions, which encompass time division multiplexing (TDM), Multi-dimensional AON (MD-AON), which leads the trend of AON’s future architecture, provides a vibrant state for emerging applications such as cloud computing and Internet of Things ( Io T). In this article, we review the evolution of AON architectures based on the different all optical switching and multiplexing technologies (ie, TDM, FDM, and SDM), which is one of the main areas of focus in this article. The other main area is detailed discussion of implementations such as data plane and control plane technologies as well as resource optimization technologies for realizing AON. AON testbeds with their compositions and functions, and some potential application scenarios that can be implemented on these testbeds