Analysis of the processing and sojourn times of Burst Control Packets in Optical Burst Switches

In Optical Burst Switched networks, when a Burst Control Packet arrives at a core node, its scheduling algorithm looks up its internal reservation table for an available gap at which to accomodate the incoming burst. The processing time of the BCP is variable, and depends on the number of available gaps over which to perform the search. This work analyses the gap distribution in such reservation table, and derives an expression for the waiting time of BCPs, assuming LAUC-VF scheduling. Our findings can be applied to the dimensioning of the offset time values in OBS networks, for a realistic case of BCP variable processing times.