Improving performance in the OpMiGua hybrid network employing the network layer packet redundancy scheme

The optical migration-capable network with service guarantees hybrid network is a time-divided packet/circuit hybrid network offering absolute performance guarantees and high resource utilisation. Guaranteed service traffic (GST) follows lightpaths receiving absolute priority over statistically multiplexed (SM) traffic. Transmission resources are fully shared by interleaving SM and GST packets, but packet-switched SM packets experience contention, resulting in a packet loss that should be minimised. This article explores a novel bufferless network approach where the performance of the SM class is satisfied by applying packet-level forward error correction (FEC). Two implementation strategies are proposed: RedSM transmitting redundancy packets as SM traffic and RedGST transmitting redundancy packets as low-priority GST traffic. The performance of the schemes is explored analytically and by simulation. For uniform traffic loads, the RedGST scheme shows the best performance of the two, but even at 60% load the RedSM scheme shows packet loss rates (PLRs)close to 10^-5. Simulations with non-uniform traffic loads illustrate the importance of selecting the optimal redundancy ratio; the failure to do so results in up to two orders of magnitude increase in PLR for the RedGST scheme. A much higher tolerance for traffic variations is the main benefit for the RedSM scheme. In view of the results, both schemes are attractive alternatives to buffered contention resolution techniques.