Probe-and-go: a novel approach to OBS

Optical burst switching achieves multiplexing gain in the optical domain but cannot reach reasonable utilization before burst losses become unacceptable. A method to avoid these losses by first sending over the control channel a short scout packet that simulates the events that the actual packet will experience, is proposed in this paper. Once the scout message detects a drop at any of the intermediate nodes, the actual packet is not sent but the process repeated.