Title :
The Rainbow-II gigabit optical network
Author :
Hall, Eric ; Kravitz, Jeff ; Ramaswami, Rajiv ; Halvorson, Marty ; Tenbrink, Stephen ; Thomsen, Richard
Author_Institution :
IBM Thomas J. Watson Res. Center, Yorktown Heights, NY, USA
fDate :
6/1/1996 12:00:00 AM
Abstract :
This paper describes the Rainbow-II optical metropolitan area network (MAN), which supports 32 nodes each at 1 Gbit/s over a distance of 10-20 km. Rainbow-II uses optical wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM), in a broadcast star architecture. Each node uses a separate fixed wavelength for transmitting data and a tunable receiver for receiving one of several data streams. The network is implemented in the form of optical network nodes, each attached to a host computer via the high-performance parallel interface (HIPPI). Each network node contains protocol processing hardware to offload the protocol processing work from the host computer onto the node. The goal is to provide full gigabit-per-second bandwidth to end-user supercomputer applications. Preliminary protocol performance measurements in a testbed network are given
Keywords :
metropolitan area networks; network interfaces; network topology; optical fibre networks; optical receivers; performance evaluation; transport protocols; wavelength division multiplexing; 1 Gbit/s; 10 to 20 km; HIPPI; MAN; Rainbow-II gigabit optical network; WDM; broadcast star architecture; data streams; data transmission; distance; gigabit per second bandwidth; high-performance parallel interface; host computer; metropolitan area network; optical network nodes; optical wavelength-division multiplexing; protocol performance measurements; protocol processing hardware; supercomputer applications; testbed network; tunable receiver; Broadcasting; Computer architecture; Computer interfaces; Computer networks; Concurrent computing; Metropolitan area networks; Optical fiber networks; Optical receivers; Protocols; Wavelength division multiplexing;
Journal_Title :
Selected Areas in Communications, IEEE Journal on
