A high speed network interface card for optical burst switched networks

Abstract

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.

The Contention Resolution in OBS Network

“…As an effective way to reduce the burst loss is using several burst contention strategies in the same OBS core router, for example, it is suggested to use wavelength converters together with FDL in one core node [16] or wavelength converters with deflection routing [17]. But questions arise about the sequence of contention resolution strategies which must be applied for bursts of various priorities coming to core node.…”