Optical network architecture for “Elephant” traffic

Future large Internet transactions (“Elephants”) will not be supported efficiently by TCP/IP Internet Protocols and traditional switching and routing paradigms. This talk describes an entire optical network architecture from the Physical Layer to the Application Layer that will support “elephants” much more efficiently and economically. In particular, bursty dynamic elephant traffic can cause serious Physical Layer transient impairments through cross-coupling in optical amplifiers that will severely corrupt all the sessions sharing the same fiber. This network architecture uses a technique called “Adiabatic Switching” and a new Transport Layer Protocol to alleviate this effect which is very prominent when the network is under congestion.