Abstract

Recently several architectures of optical packet switches have been proposed.^1–5 All these architectures have such a common feature that delay lines composed by optical fibers are used for buffers to avoid packet contention in core fabric. Since the capacity of optical buffers is strictly limited by space limitations, buffer overflows will be a serious problem. The expansion of the size of buffers will greatly improve the quality of service in terms of packet loss ratio. On the other hand, in high-speed optical packet switched networks, it is likely that offered traffic load is not so high (e.g., less than 80%).

© 2002 Optical Society of America