We experimentally study the performance of wavelength-division-multiplexing (WDM) metro/access ring networks, based on semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOAs), considering several gain control techniques. We show that gain control through link-control (LC) channel or amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) power recirculation, effectively used in erbium-doped fiber amplifier-based WDM ring networks, introduces serious penalties due to intensity noise transfer, and cannot be used in short-span SOA-based WDM rings. On the other hand, we observe a net benefit using LC channel and ASE extraction for short span rings and a limited WDM channel number, compared with linear operating conditions. An effective optical signal-to-noise ratio improvement of 2.1 dB has been achieved with LC channel extraction with respect to linear operation, for a 4 x 13.5 dB span ring with eight WDM channels. For spans longer …