Routing in all-optical packet switched irregular mesh networks

The performance of packet switching wavelength routed optical networks critically depends on packet contentions at the intermediate routers. This paper shows through simulations that deflection routing is an effective technique for packet switching wavelength routed optical networks with irregular meshed topologies. It is shown that multiple path routing (MPR) as the deflection rule mitigates the blocking of packets substantially in cross-connected all-optical networks leading to a significant reduction in hardware volume and cost of all-optical IP routers. The effectiveness of the blocking reduction critically depends on the network topology, and meshed topologies with a high number of interconnections benefit of the largest gain from deflection routing.