Contention resolution for optical burst switching networks using alternative routing

Optical burst switching (OBS) is an approach to building very high capacity routing switches based on optical data paths and electronic control. Therefore, OBS is considered as a viable solution in the high-speed optical Internet backbone. In this paper, we propose an intra-class contention resolution scheme in optical burst switching networks by the enhanced alternative routing algorithm. The blocking probability of the proposed scheme is significantly reduced as compared with the general OBS while the additional delay due to the alternative path is smaller than 10% of the basic offset time.