Trading nodal storage capacity with incremental transmission capacity in supra-high-speed packet-switching nets

The authors present queuing-theoretic formulations for trading nodal storage capacity (i.e., buffers) requirements for the incremental transmission capacity of the links in supra-high-speed packet-switching nets. The performance criterion used is the mean nodal forwarding time. The results are useful for designing all-optical packet-switching telecommunication networks where the designer must compute the amount of incremental transmission capacity needed to eliminate a prespecified number of nodal buffers while preserving the same mean (or average) nodal forwarding time. A single optical buffer can be easily implemented by using a simple optical delay line. An example is included using a very-high-speed regular digraph as an architecture of a macro-switching fabric.