Novel virtual OCS in OPS data center networks

Abstract

This paper considers a novel virtual optical circuit switching (VOCS) scheme for data center networks where short flows are transmitted via optical packet switching (OPS), while long flows with reliability requirement are transmitted via VOCS. VOCS preserves the advantage of optical circuit switching (OCS) for reliable communication, while it overcomes the disadvantage of OCS in terms of low link utilization. In the VOCS/OPS scheme, idle periods of the virtual circuits can be used by OPS, which thus enhances the overall performance. Simulations on a six-dimensional torus topology data center network with 4096 (=4$$^6$$6) nodes are conducted for the performance evaluation. We have observed that, compared to OCS, VOCS has much less adverse impact on the performance of OPS. Furthermore, quite a large number (i.e., 2048) of virtual circuits can be set up with little affect on the OPS performance.