Introduction to Optical Packet Switched (OPS) Networks

Future Internet requires both bandwidth and quality of service (QoS) because of an ever-increasing number of Internet users and a growing number of real-time applications (such as video on demand, voice over IP, IPTV, video conferencing, etc.) that require different levels of QoS. This could be a problem when the network bandwidth is limited, when the network supports only the best effort traffic, or when the Internet traffic does not have a uniform characteristic. This chapter provides an introduction to Optical Packet Switched (OPS) networks, its architectures, and QoS in OPS. In addition to OPS networks, GMPLS-supported optical networks and optical networks based on Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OOFDM) are studied in this chapter.