A study in photonic switched networks considering link failure and ingress buffering

In this paper we study the behavior of traffic in Metropolitan Access Optical Networks with technologies of optical packet/burst switching (OPS/OBS), using computer modeling and simulations. We analyze network performance and the impact of link failure when electronic buffering at ingress (client input) to optical network is implemented. Mesh and ring topologies are chosen and parameters packet loss fraction and average number of hops are adopted for performance metrics. The use of minimum electronic buffering at ingress is demonstrated to improve access to the optical layer, and necessary to keep the packet loss fraction low and throughput high with low latency. We also show that optical buffering is not necessary for adequate network performance.