Photonic IP routing

Abstract

A photonic Internet protocol (IP) routing is proposed in which the IP address, mapped onto optical code, is recognized by performing optical correlation in the time domain in a parallel manner. Preliminary experiment shows that it can process 6.5/spl times/10/sup 9/ packets per second. It will help overcome the bottleneck in current electrical IP routers; i.e., the time it takes to look up addresses in the routing table.