Multi-granular traffic scheduling in hybrid optical interconnection

Multi-granular traffic is considered as the traffic generated by the high variety of applications supported by future Internet. Hybrid interconnection is a viable way to achieve the high throughput and flexibility required in the optical nodes with available optical and electronic technology. The task of finding a way to efficiently match these two key aspects is a challenge for possible short term exploitation of optical technology in dynamic networking. In this paper, multi-granular traffic representation and scheduling to exploit hybrid switch resources are proposed, while differentiating traffic classes. Loss and delay are evaluated by simulation based on a simplified ON/OFF model of the input traffic mix, which is able to take some key aspects of multi-granular traffic, such as burstiness and quality of service requirements, into account. Results outline the class isolation capabilities of the proposed scheduling algorithm and the achievements in terms of time and semantic transparency.