The main interests of the GIGA Project are the deployment of Optical Network Technology, Network Services and Applications, Experimental Telecommunication Services and Scientific Applications. In the context of this Project, our research group has been working in the design of a IP/WDM Control Plane to integrate the IP/MPLS Client Network with the Optical Transport Network (WDM), according to the GMPLS and ASON specifications. We propose a UNI (User Network Interface) architecture providing an independent signaling protocol to integrate the Client and the Optical Transport Networks. The proposed UNI architecture maintains unchanged the client and transport networks signaling semantics for the GIGA testbed network. The paper describes how the designed architecture supports the independence of the signaling protocol and presents the prototype implemented to validate the architecture. © 2006 IEEE. 285290Agrawal, G.P., (2002) Fiber-Optic Communication Systems, , 3rd Edition. John Wiley, JuneMannie, E., (2004) Generalized Multi-Protocol Label Switching (GMPLS) Architecture, , RFC 3945, OctoberBerger, L., (2003) Generalized Multi-Protocol Label Switching (GMPLS) Signaling Functional Description, , RFC 3471, JanuaryKatz, D., Kompella, K., Yeung, D., (2003) Traffic Engineering (TE) Extensions to OSPF Version 2, , RFC 3630, SeptemberLang, J., (2005) Link Management Protocol (LMP), , RFC 4204, OctoberITU-T: Architecture for the Automatically Switched Optical Network (ASON), G.8080/Y.1304, 2001OIF User Network Interface (UNI) 1.0 Signaling Specification, Release 2: Common Part, February 2004Swallow, G., Drake, J., Ishimatsu, H., Rekhter, Y., (2005) Generalized Multi-Protocol Label Switching (GMPLS) User-Network Interface (UNI): Resource ReSerVation Protocol-Traffic Engineering (RSPV-TE) Support for the Overlay Model, , RFC 4208, OctoberBraden, R., Zhang, L., Berson, S., Herzog, S., Jamin, S., (1997) Resource ReSerVation Protocol (RSVP) - Version 1 Functional Specification, , RFC 2205, SeptemberAwduche, D., Berger, L., Gan, D., Li, T., Srinivasan, V., Swallow, G., (2001) RSVP-TE: Extensions to RSVP for LSP Tunnels, , RFC 3209, DecemberBerger, L., (2003) Generalized Multi-Protocol Label Switching (GMPLS) Signaling Resource ReSerVation Protocol-Traffic Engineering (RSPV-TE) Extensions, , RFC 3473, JanuaryPapadimitriou, D., Verchere, D., GMPLS User-Network Interface in Support of End-to-End Rerouting (2005) IEEE Communication Magazine, pp. 35-43. , JulyPapadimitriou, D., Rousseau, B., Krber, W., Brockmann, S., Verchere, D., The Private User Network Interface - a GMPLS-compliant signaling interface for overlay-based multilayer networks (2004) Journal of Optical Networking, pp. 119-132. , MarchMargaria, C., Juillot, G., Autenrieth, A., Performance Evaluation of a GMPLS Prototype Broadband Communications and Distributed Systems, pp. 211-222Maesschalck, S.D., Pickavet, M., Colle, D., Demeester, P., Multilayer Traffic Grooming in networks with an IP/MPLS Layer on top of a meshed Optical Layer (2003) GLOBECOM, pp. 2750-2754