Optical coarse packet-switched IP-over-WDM network (OPSINET): technologies and experiments

Optical Packet Switching (OPS) has been envisioned as a prominent future optical networking technology for datacentric IP over Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM) networks, or optical Internet. Such OPS technology however raises significant transport and Quality of Service (QoS) challenges due to technological limitations. To circumvent OPS limitations, we have proposed a new Optical Coarse Packet Switching (OCPS) paradigm, which uses in-band-controlled per-burst switching and advocates traffic control enforcement to achieve high packet-loss performance and differentiated services. Based on OCPS, we have constructed an experimental IP-over-WDM network, referred to as OPSINET. OPSINET consists of two major types of nodes-edge routers, and Optical Label Switched Routers (OLSRs), and is facilitated with an out-of-band Generalized Multi-protocol Label Switching (GMPLS) control network. In this paper, we first introduce the OCPS paradigm. We then present the architecture of OPSINET, describe the in-band header/payload modulation technique, and detail the operations of the edge routers, OLSRs, and GMPLS control.