Improving the performance of optical burst-switched networks with limited-range wavelength conversion through traffic engineering in the wavelength domain

Abstract

Optical Burst Switching (OBS) is a promising switching paradigm to efficiently support Internet Protocol (IP) packets over optical networks, under current and foreseeable limitations of optical technology. The prospects of OBS networks would greatly benefit, in terms of cost and ease of implementation, from limiting the wavelength conversion capabilities at the network nodes. This paper describes and assesses the performance of a traffic engineering strategy for optimizing the wavelength assignment in OBS networks with limited-range wavelength conversion capabilities. Simulation results show that this strategy significantly improves the network performance when the network nodes have wavelength converters with small conversion ranges. © 2008 Springer Berlin Heidelberg.