WDM burst switching for petabit capacity routers

WDM burst switching is an approach to building very high capacity routing switches based on optical data paths and electronic control. Burst switches assign user data bursts to channels in WDM links on-the-fly in order to provide efficient statistical multiplexing of high rate data channels. The overall system architecture is designed to facilitate the introduction of optical switching components as they become more highly integrated. At the same time it exploits the sophistication of modern electronic processing to perform the routing and higher level control operations needed in realistic, large scale networks.