Optical networking has been supporting multimedia environment that rapidly increases the demands for high quality and high speed. This optical networking continues to make progress by adopting state-of-the-art networking technologies. Recently, great varieties of optical circuits have come to be applied to the optical signal-processing unit. Polymeric materials, excellent in processing, make it possible to make larger optical devices, this realizing low-cost optical circuits which would be one of the potential components for future personal optical networking systems. Furthermore, several optical features were found in polymer's intrinsic properties, and they have been widely used for optical devices. In this paper, we review the recent developments and prospects of both passive and active optical components. We discuss several important passive components, such as optical waveguide, optical interconnection, optical branching circuits, and multiplexer/demultiplexer. As for active components, we mainly discuss novel switching devices using the Pockels effect and the thermo-optic effect.
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