Optical burst switching (OBS) – a new paradigm for an Optical Internet^{1}

Article type: Research Article

Authors: Qiao, Chunming^; | Yoo, Myungsik

Affiliations: Department of CSE, Laboratory for Advanced Network Design, Evaluation and Research (LANDER), University at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY 14260, USA | Department of EE, Laboratory for Advanced Network Design, Evaluation and Research (LANDER), University at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY 14260, USA

Note: [] Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 716 645 3180, ext. 140; Fax: +1 716 645 3464; E‐mail: [email protected].

Abstract: 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 generation Optical Internet. By leveraging the attractive properties of optical communications and at the same time, taking into account its limitations, OBS combines the best of optical circuit‐switching and packet/cell switching. In this paper, the general concept of OBS protocols and in particular, those based on Just‐Enough‐Time (JET), is described, along with the applicability of OBS protocols to IP over WDM. Specific issues such as the use of fiber delay‐lines (FDLs) for accommodating processing delay and/or resolving conflicts are also discussed. In addition, the performance of JET‐based OBS protocols which use an offset time along with delayed reservation to achieve efficient utilization of both bandwidth and FDLs as well as to support priority‐based routing is evaluated.

Keywords: Bursty traffic, fiber delay line (FDL), IP, optical networks, reservation, WDM

Journal: Journal of High Speed Networks, vol. 8, no. 1, pp. 69-84, 1999