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

TLDR

OBS merges optical circuit‑switching and packet/cell switching to exploit optical communication advantages while mitigating its limitations. The paper proposes OBS to efficiently handle bursty Internet traffic, outlining its general concept, JET‑based protocols, and applicability to IP over WDM. OBS employs Just‑Enough‑Time protocols with offset time and delayed reservation, using fiber delay‑lines to accommodate processing delay and resolve conflicts, and is evaluated for bandwidth and FDL utilization. Evaluation shows that JET‑based OBS protocols achieve efficient bandwidth and FDL utilization while supporting priority‑based routing.

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.