Software-Defined Optical Burst Switching for HPC and Cloud Computing Data Centers

Abstract

In this paper, we assess the performance of\ntechniques for optical burst switching (OBS) designed for\nhigh performance computing (HPC) and cloud computing\ndata center networks (DCNs) by using network-level simulation. We consider short-duration bursts using the faster\nswitching technologies that are now available. The modeled switch architecture features fast optical switches in\na single-hop topology with a centralized, software-defined\noptical control plane. Instead of using OBS with traditional\nmethods (i.e., one-way reservation), we consider OBS with a\ntwo-way reservation protocol that results in zero burst loss.\nWe model different workloads with various data rates by\nconsidering different edge-to-core network oversubscription ratios to investigate the performance of such designs\nacross usage patterns. Our results reveal that the proposed\ntechnique shows considerable improvement in terms of\nthroughput and packet loss ratio and comparable performance in terms of delay when compared to traditional\nmethods of OBS