Contention Resolution for Transmission Control Protocol over Optical Burst-Switching Networks Using Random Segment Dropping

Abstract

Optical burst switching (OBS) is a promising method for data transfer in photonic networks based on a Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM) technology. Transmission control protocol (TCP)-based applications generate the majority of data traffic in the Internet; thus, understanding and improving the performance of TCP over OBS networks is critical. In this paper, we develop a novel burst-dropping strategy to improve the quality of service provided by TCP over OBS networks. Our approach relies on random-segment dropping according to the capacity of a special optical component, called the optical virtual memory, which is used for buffering purposes within the optical switches. The core node predicts incipient congestion by computing the average blocking duration in the optical virtual memories. When this size exceeds a threshold, segments are randomly dropped. Simulation results show that the proposed method performs better than common techniques in terms of burst loss probability and transmission delay.