Transport layer protocol for optical flow-switched networks

We explore transport layer protocol design for an optical flow-switched (OFS) network. The design guarantees the reliable delivery of data files over an all-optical end-to-end flow-switched lightpath which is a burst-error channel due to gain transients in EDFAs. TCP performs poorly for OFS. TCP flow control and fair resource allocation with windowing are unnecessary in OFS networks since they are done via scheduling. In our protocol design, we optimize throughput efficiency and delay using file segmentation and reassembly, interleaving with forward error-correction and frame retransmission.