Performance evaluation of hybrid buffering optical packet switch for Pareto traffic

Optical packet switching is an emerging technology, which provides enormous bandwidth for Internet traffic. In this paper, we investigate the performance of hybrid buffering optical packet switch with fixed-length packets under self-similar Pareto traffic, for a more realistic traffic. The performance is evaluated in terms of packet loss rate and average delay by means of simulation experiments. Usually, the performance of WDM packet switches is investigated under Poisson or Markovian arrival process. Therefore, in order to show the influence of different traffic, the performance of the switch under Pareto and Poisson traffic are compared in this paper. Moreover, from economical view, the optical cost of the switch architecture is assessed based on fiber-to-chip coupling to estimate hardware complexity, scalability.