TCP Over Optical Burst Switching (OBS): To Split or Not To Split?

TCP-based applications account for a majority of data traffic in the Internet; thus understanding and improving the performance of TCP over OBS network is critical. In this paper, we identify the ill-effects of implementing TCP over a hybrid network (IP-access and OBS-core). We purpose a Split- TCP approach for a hybrid IP-OBS network to improve TCP performance. We propose two Split-TCP approaches, namely, 1:1:1 and N:1:N. We evaluate the performance of the proposed approaches over an IP-OBS hybrid network. Based on the simulation results, N:1:N Split-TCP approach outperforms all other approaches.