To support bursty traffic on the Internet (and especially WWW) efficiently, optical burst switching (OBS) is proposed as a way to streamline both protocols and hardware in building the future gener...

Optical burst switching (OBS) - a new paradigm for an optical Internet

In this tutorial, we give an introduction to optical burst switching and compare it with other existing optical switching paradigms. Basic burst assembly algorithms and their effect on assembled burst traffic characteristics are described first. Then a brief review of the early work on burst transmission is provided, followed by a description of a prevailing protocol for OBS networks called just-enough-time (JET). Algorithms used as an OBS core node for burst scheduling as well as contention resolution strategies are presented next. Trade-offs between their performance and implementation complexities are discussed. Recent work on QoS support, IP/WDM multicast, TCP performance in OBS networks, and labeled OBS is also described, and several open issues are mentioned.

Optical burst switching: a new area in optical networking research

This paper reviews advanced optical burst switching (OBS) and optical packet switching (OPS) technologies and discusses their roles in the future photonic Internet. Discussions include optoelectronic and optical systems technologies as well as systems integration into viable network elements (OBS and OPS routers). Optical label switching (OLS) offers a unified multiple-service platform with effective and agile utilization of the available optical bandwidth in support of voice, data, and multimedia services on the Internet Protocol. In particular, OLS routers with wavelength routing switching fabrics and parallel optical labeling allow forwarding of asynchronously arriving variable-length packets, bursts, and circuits. By exploiting contention resolution in wavelength, time, and space domains, the OLS routers can achieve high throughput without resorting to a store-and-forward method associated with large buffer requirements. Testbed demonstrations employing OLS edge routers show high-performance networking in support of multimedia and data communications applications over the photonic Internet with optical packets and bursts switched directly at the optical layer

Optical Packet and Burst Switching Technologies for the Future Photonic Internet

The concept of optical burst switching (OBS) aims to allow access to optical bandwidth in dense wavelength division multiplexed (DWDM) networks at fractions of the optical line rate to improve bandwidth utilization efficiency. This paper studies an alternative network architecture combining OBS with dynamic wavelength allocation under fast circuit switching to provide a scalable optical architecture with a guaranteed QoS in the presence of dynamic and bursty traffic loads. In the proposed architecture, all processing and buffering are concentrated at the network edge and bursts are routed over an optical transport core using dynamic wavelength assignment. It is assumed that there are no buffers or wavelength conversion in core nodes and that fast tuneable laser sources are used in the edge routers. This eliminates the forwarding bottleneck of electronic routers in DWDM networks for terabit-per-second throughput and guarantees forwarding with predefined delay at the edge and latency due only to propagation time in the core. The edge burst aggregation mechanisms are evaluated for a range of traffic statistics to identify their impact on the allowable burst lengths, required buffer size and achievable edge delays. Bandwidth utilization and wavelength reuse are introduced as new parameters characterizing the network performance in the case of dynamic wavelength allocation. Based on an analytical model, upper bounds for these parameters are derived to quantify the advantages of wavelength channel reuse, including the influence of the signaling round-trip time required for lightpath reservation. The results allow to quantify the operational gain achievable with fast wavelength switching compared to quasistatic wavelength-routed optical networks and can be applied to the design of future optical network architectures.

Analysis of a dynamically wavelength-routed optical burst switched network architecture

Optical burst switching is a promising solution for all-optical WDM networks. It combines the benefits of optical packet switching and wavelength routing while taking into account the limitations of the current all-optical technology. In OBS, the user data is collected at the edge of the network, sorted based on a destination address, and grouped into variable sized bursts. Prior to transmitting a burst, a control packet is created and immediately sent toward the destination in order to set up a bufferless optical path for its corresponding burst. After an offset delay time, the data burst itself is transmitted without waiting for a positive acknowledgment from the destination node. The OBS framework has been widely studied in the past few years because it achieves high traffic throughput and high resource utilization. However, despite the OBS trademarks such as dynamic connection setup or strong separation between data and control, there are many differences in the published OBS architectures. In this article we summarize in a systematic way the main OBS design parameters and the solutions that have been proposed in the open literature.

An introduction to optical burst switching

This paper investigates the challenges for developing the current local area network (LAN)-based Ethernet protocol into a technology for future network architectures that is capable of satisfying dynamic traffic demands with hard service guarantees using high-bit-rate channels (80...100 Gb/s). The objective is to combine high-speed optical transmission and physical interfaces (PHY) with a medium access control (MAC) protocol, designed to meet the service guarantees in future metropolitan-area networks (MANs). Ethernet is an ideal candidate for the extension into the MAN as it allows seamless compatibility with the majority of existing LANs. The proposed extension of the MAC protocol focuses on backward compatibility as well as on the exploitation of the wavelength domain for routing of variable traffic demands. The high bit rates envisaged will easily exhaust the capacity of a single optical fiber in the C band and will require network algorithms optimizing the reuse of wavelength resources. To investigate this, four different static and dynamic optical architectures were studied that potentially offer advantages over current link-based designs. Both analytical and numerical modeling techniques were applied to quantify and compare the network performance for all architectures in terms of achievable throughput, delay, and the number of required wavelengths and to investigate the impact of nonuniform traffic demands. The results show that significant resource savings can be achieved by using end-to-end dynamic lightpath allocation, but at the expense of high delay.

Next-generation 100-gigabit metro ethernet (100 GbME) using multiwavelength optical rings

This letter describes a novel network architecture combining optical burst switching with dynamic wavelength allocation to achieve a guaranteed quality of service. All processing and buffering functions are concentrated at the network edge and bursts are assigned to fast tuneable lasers and routed over a bufferless optical transport core using dynamic wavelength assignment. Burst aggregation is evaluated for a range of traffic statistics in terms of delay and packet loss rate, and an analytical model is given to quantify the benefits of dynamic wavelength reuse. The results define the operational gain achievable with dynamic wavelength assignment compared to quasi-static wavelength-routed optical networks.

Performance of a dynamically wavelength-routed optical burst switched network

The maximum traffic load that can be supported by a wavelength division multiplexed (WDM) optical burst switched (OBS) network with dynamic wavelength allocation is studied. It is shown that it depends on the requirements of the class of service and on the efficiency of the dynamic routing and wavelength assignment (RWA) algorithm employed. Two methods to build the bursts are presented as well as their influence on the maximum traffic load that can be supported.

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Traffic Load Bounds for Optical Burst-Switched Networks with Dynamic Wavelength Allocation

The concept of optical burst switching (OBS) aims to allow access to optical bandwidth in dense wavelength division multiplexed (DWDM) networks at fractions of the optical line rate to improve bandwidth utilization efficiency. This paper studies a novel approach to combine OBS with dynamic wavelength allocation to provide a scalable optical architecture with a guaranteed QoS. In the proposed architecture all processing and buffering are concentrated at the network edge and bursts are assigned to fast tuneable lasers an routed over a bufferless optical transport core using dynamic wavelength assignment and no wavelength conversion. This guarantees forwarding with pre-defined delay at the edge, and latency due only to propagation time in the core. The edge burst aggregation mechanisms are evaluated for a range of traffic statistics to identify their impact on the allowable burst lengths, required buffer size and achievable edge delays. Bandwidth utilization and wavelength re-use are introduced and upper bounds for these parameters are derived to quantify the advantages of dynamic wavelength allocation, including the influence of the signaling round-trip time-required for lightpath reservation. The results allow evaluation of the operational gain achievable with dynamic wavelength assignment compared to quasi-static wavelength-routed optical networks.

M. Duser

Papers

Analysis of a dynamically wavelength-routed optical burst switched network architecture

Next-generation 100-gigabit metro ethernet (100 GbME) using multiwavelength optical rings

Performance of a dynamically wavelength-routed optical burst switched network

Traffic Load Bounds for Optical Burst-Switched Networks with Dynamic Wavelength Allocation

Performance of a dynamically wavelength-routed, optical burst switched network