We experimentally investigate dynamic bit-error rate (BER) performance impairments induced by add-drop operations in semiconductor-optical amplifer (SOA)-based wavelength-division-multiplexing (WDM) metro-ring networks. Link control techniques in short-medium span networks provide effective performance improvement and significant BER transient reduction during add-drop operation, with respect to SOA linear operating condition (low input signal power). This behavior is confirmed by dynamic BER measurements and optical signal-to-noise penalty analysis.