A special family of optical address codes, called strict optical orthogonal codes (OOCs), is proposed for fiber-optic code-division multiple access (FO-CDMA) networks. Such codes can strictly guarantee both crosscorrelation and autocorrelation constraints (i.e., /spl lambda//sub c/ and /spl lambda//sub a/) to be one in fully asynchronous data communications and ultrafast switching. Theory of strict OOCs is presented and the code design is described by using the concepts of slot distances. Moreover, the use of strict OOCs can support variable-rate and multirate data communications in an FO-CDMA network with no violation of /spl lambda//sub c/=/spl lambda//sub a/=1 and no increase of system complexity compared to using conventional OOCs.