An improved four-port dichroic WDM, for use in a multiwavelength, bi-directional optical amplifier, having a dichroic filter for substantially reflecting a first wavelength band input to the WDM to an output of the WDM for the first wavelength band and for substantially transmitting a second wavelength band input to the WDM to an output of the WDM for the second wavelength band, in which some of a first 3dB wavelength in the first wavelength band is transmitted by the filter and some of a second 3 dB wavelength in the second wavelength band is reflected by the filter, includes another dichroic filter having a filter function different than the filter function of the WDM filter providing an insertion loss for the first or the second 3 dB wavelengths sufficient to reflect and transmit, respectively, substantially all of the first and second 3 dB wavelengths. Additional dichroic filters for suppressing 3 dB light are used to prevent Q-switching in an optical gain cavity in a multiwavelength, bi-directional optical amplifier formed by a reflection point in an optical path connected to the amplifier.