Carriers, cloud service providers, and internet content providers are under tremendous pressure to scale their networks to meet the continuously increasing bandwidth demands for business-critical enterprise applications, wholesale services, data center interconnect (DCI), storage extension, high-performance computing (HPC), and the growing shift to cloud services. Enterprise customers, who until now have only had modest WAN requirements, perhaps even relying on public internet connectivity or low-bandwidth IP services, now need low-latency, guaranteed private line services. This requires new solutions that deliver the increased bandwidth to many more end nodes and customer locations having size and power constraints as well as the need for service level agreement (SLA) assurance with proper network demarcation and operational simplicity. Photonic Service Demarcation (PSD) addresses these challenges by providing a compact, high-capacity, low-delay, and easy-to-deploy solution. It delivers important features needed in the access nodes, enabling operators and service providers to benefit by providing universal Ethernet or wavelength services (otherwise known as wave services or MEF Layer 1 connectivity services) in one platform.