Delayed Burst Segmentation for Multi-hop Optical Burst Switching Networks

In optical burst switching (OBS) networks burst segmentation is an efficient contention resolution for only the overlapped portion of a burst being dropped. However the inherent limitation of burst segmentation is that the policy for dropping segments works in the order of burst head packets arrival times rather than bursts arrival times order. It means that in multi-hop networks the policy for dropping segments may not be strictly maintained, which will result in challenges for segmentation-based scheduling algorithms and burst assembly schemes. Delayed burst segmentation is proposed so that segments are dropped in the order of bursts arrival times and can be strictly maintained to some extent.