Provision of End-to-End Delay Guarantees in Wavelength-Routed Optical Burst-Switched Networks

Abstract

In Wavelength-Routed Optical Burst-Switched Networks (WR-OBS), lightpaths are dynamically established for the transmission of bursts (aggregation of packets in edge routers) through a bufferless optical core. In this paper, we show how WR-OBS can provide end-to-end delay guarantees, and introduce methods to achieve fairness in the network. The conditions under which WR-OBS bring operational advantages when compared to wavelength-routed optical networks (WRONs) are identified using an example of a real network and taking into account the diameter of the network and the number of wavelengths required.