Impact of TCP synchronization on capacity dimensioning of Optical Burst Switched (OBS) links

We study the effect of TCP synchronization on Optical Burst Switched (OBS) networks and its impact on capacity dimensioning. The synchronization of TCP flows appears when a burst with segments from different TCP flows is discarded, making that all TCP flows reduce their transmission rate at the same time, leading to inefficient bandwidth sharing. This paper analyzes the bandwidth capacity that needs to be provisioned in OBS links transporting synchronized flows, when compared to a non-synchronized scenario.