Fast Core Smart Edge "Optical-Label" Switching Networks for the Next Generation Internet

This project is pursuing studies on the architecture and protocol design, performance analysis, and experimentation of optical packet switching networks, targeting to achieve a high-performance optical-label switching (OLS) system in the core (fast core) with an intelligent traffic management at the edge (smart edge).
The proposed "fast core smart edge" network architecture has an all-optical data plane, where OLS core routers perform transparent packet forwarding based on a sub-carrier multiplexed optical-label containing routing and control information. An optical router consists of arrayed-wavelength-grating- router, tunable wavelength converters, fixed wavelength converters, and a switching controller. It exploits the wavelength, time, and space domain to resolve the contention by means of wavelength converters, Fiber Delay Lines (FDL), and optical switches. In contrast to conventional electronic routers with contention resolution primarily in the time domain, the additional wavelength domain provides appealing potential to obtain high performance all-optical switching capacities.
In light of the self-similar nature of Internet traffic and the irregular distribution of Internet packet length, the project exploits the availability of the electronic buffer at the ingress edge router to reshape the traffic profile. This traffic-shaping function is achieved by assembling "jumbo optical packets" from client IP packets of the same destination and of common attributes. Our simulation work indicates that the traffic-shaping mechanism can efficiently reduce the network-wide packet-loss rate. To boost the transmission capacity from the optical core to the electrical edge, this project also investigates the effect of the redundant local drop ports at the egress router on the network performance.
In this "fast core smart edge" architecture, the wavelength dimension enables a scalable solution to resolve contention by taking benefit of a large amount of available wavelengths. Simulation work has demonstrated that the proposed network could achieve a very low packet-loss rate (0.0001% at load 0.6) by means of the wavelength-time-space domain contention resolution in the core together with enhanced edge routers. Based on the proposed "fast core smart edge" network architecture, we are continuing to further our researches on the following topics:
> Design of a high-performance multi-stage OLS core router architecture
> Implementation of the enhanced edge router for OLS networks
> Network Control and Management (NC&M) system for OLS networks
> Visualization applications supported by OLS networks