Title :
An in-band signaling protocol for optical packet switching networks
Author :
Li, Bo ; Ganz, Aura ; Krishna, C.M.
Author_Institution :
Dept. of Comput. Sci., Hong Kong Univ., China
Abstract :
Advances in optical networking reveal that all optical networks offering a multigigabit rate per wavelength will soon become economical as the underlying backbone in wide-area networks, in which the optical switch plays a central role. One of the central issues is the design of efficient signaling protocols which can support diversified traffic types, in particular the bursty IP traffic. This paper introduces a novel signaling protocol called the sampling probe algorithm (or SPA) to be used in a class of optical packet switching systems based on wavelength division multiplexing (WDM). The proposed scheme takes a drastically different approach from all existing signaling protocols. The salient features are 1) the pretransmission coordination is using an in-band signaling protocol, and thus does not require separate control channel(s) for transmission coordination; 2) the protocol is based on a reservation (connection) scheme which is capable of supporting multimedia traffic; 3) a gated service is adopted in which each successful reservation allows multiple packets (train of packets) to be transmitted, which can significantly reduce the per packet overhead; 4) the scheduling algorithm is adaptive by allowing flexible assignment of bandwidth on-demand; 5) the channel status gathering is done in a distributed fashion, and uses a passive listening mechanism, which itself does not interfere with packet transmissions. The results demonstrate that the proposed in-band signaling protocol can achieve high throughput and stability under heavy traffic condition.
Keywords :
Internet; multimedia communication; optical fibre networks; packet switching; protocols; scheduling; telecommunication signalling; wavelength division multiplexing; SPA; WDM; bandwidth on-demand; bursty IP traffic; channel status gathering; connection scheme; control channel; diversified traffic; gated service; in-band signaling protocol; multimedia traffic; optical networking; optical packet switching networks; optical switch; packet transmissions; passive listening; pretransmission coordination; reservation scheme; sampling probe algorithm; scheduling algorithm; stability; throughput; traffic condition; wavelength division multiplexing; wide-area networks; All-optical networks; Optical fiber networks; Optical packet switching; Optical switches; Protocols; Sampling methods; Signal design; Spine; Telecommunication traffic; Wavelength division multiplexing;
Journal_Title :
Selected Areas in Communications, IEEE Journal on