Cross-layer proactive packet protection switching

To address exponentially-increasing traffic demands, cross-layer optimized architectures will be required to access the optical layer and allow for packet-level control of larger optical flows. In this work, we investigate cross-layer communications that use performance monitoring parameters in a proactive packet protection switching scheme to reroute data traffic. The optical signal quality is captured by bit error ratio measurements and made available to higher-layers, which then trigger flow rerouting based on the per-flow optical signal quality. We experimentally demonstrate cross-layer communications in a test-bed supporting 8 × 10-Gb/s wavelength-striped optical packets. Furthermore, we compare cross-layer packet protection to a fast-reroute scheme in simulation, showing reduced packet loss rates and gains in throughput that are dependent on impairment dynamics and network size.