Optical networks based on the ‘clockwork’ routing mechanism have significant advantages for high-speed optical packet switched applications in which latency is critical, such as parallel and distributed computing. The main advantages are that no optical buffers and no centralized contention arbitration are required. However, the network performance decreases rapidly with increasing network size. This article proposes the use of wavelength division multiplexing, in combination with clockwork routing, to provide significant improvements in network scalability and bisection bandwidth, resulting in higher throughput and reduced latency.