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Optical Burst Switching (OBS) is emerging as an optical networking technology combining best of the features of optical circuit-switching technology and optical packetswitching technology. This paper discusses architecture and hardware implementation of a Network Interface Card (NIC) for an OBS network. The NIC implements a specific low-latency signaling protocol Just-in-Time (JIT) for OBS networks. This NIC can handle data streams up to 1 Gbps. Average OBS JIT signaling message processing time with this NIC is on the order of 1 microsecond. This is the first JIT OBS NIC implementation known to the authors. Complementary efforts are on-going to develop other elements for the OBS network.

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REPORT DOCUMENTATION PAGEForm Public reporting burden for this collection of information is estimated to average 1 hour per response, including the time for reviewing instructions, searching existing data sources, gathering and maintaining the data needed, and completing and reviewing this collection of information. 12b. DISTRIBUTION CODE ABSTRACT (Maximum 200 Words)This final technical report presents the results and conclusions from a set of research objectives posed by the Helios project. The objectives included: The study of all-optical LAN architectures and protocols; the establishment of a testbed for the purpose of demonstrating high-bandwidth applications and collecting and analyzing statistical profiles of their traffic; and the study of propagation of analog signals through all-optical networks. The report is structured as follows: Sections 2, 3 and 4 describe MCNC-RDI's work on the HiPeR-1 protocol and scheduler for broadcast WDM LAN architectures. Section 5 describes the application testbed established between MCNC-RDI, NCSU and UNC-CH using NCNI infrastructure for the purpose of accumulating statistical information about traffic demands of highbandwidth applications. Section 6 describes the application cluster established within MCNC-RDI in order to test highbandwidth/high-compute demand applications. Section 7 describes the research performed at Lucent Bell Labs concerned with transporting analog signals over DWDM optical links including physical layer impairments and adaptation layer studies. Section 8 describes the work performed jointly by UNC-CH and the University of Pennsylvania to establish a multimedia network testbed for telepresence applications. The Appendices present some of the technical details related to the HiPeR-1 scheduling protocol developed and implemented by MCNC-RDI.