All-optical label swapping: a challenge for node dimensioning

All optical label swapping (AOLS) is a promising packet switching technology as it intends to solve the potential mismatch between fibre capacity and router packet forwarding capacity. In this paper we investigate how the use of all-optical label swapping in an optical packet switching network creates some challenges from the node dimensioning point of view. To lower the cost of the AOLS-node, it is beneficial to reduce the number of different labels used throughout the network and hence the number of bits occupied by the label. To this purpose label stripping, a label switching strategy based on stripping of local labels is proposed. In this paper we compare label stripping to label swapping from the point of node dimensioning and we will map the impact of other network parameters on the AOLS node dimensions.