Clustering core nodes allows efficient all-optical payload switching

Clustering neighboring nodes of an all-optical core network into medium-sized rings featuring reservation-based control, allows lossless aggregation of bursts and a reduction of possible source-destination pairs. Both act towards reducing the system cost and burst loss creating an architecture that obviates most of the expensive and loss-prone all-optical switches by delegating the switching function to a medium access control protocol coordinating the distributed laser transmitters. This is in principle the approach taken in early LANs, but with the optical switches the incentive is not limited to avoiding their high cost but also the high burst loss arising from the very limited optical buffering. The end result is a core architecture with much lower losses than one-way systems, much lower delay than solutions employing two-way reservations end-to-end, still achieving multiplexing gain.