Cost analysis of DWDM multi-mode switching router

Optical networks with DWDM technology have been considered the most promising solution for the next generation networks. While DWDM is universally used in transmission, different switching technologies can be used to direct input data to the desired output at router nodes. Although electronic packet switching (EPS) can switch at the packet level and provide a rich set of traffic management capacities, the cost to support a large number of DWDM channels is high due to the cost of O/E/O conversion. On the other hand, while optical switching technologies can cost effectively scale to support a large number of DWDM channels, neither of the two practical optical switching technologies, namely, optical circuit switching (OCS), and optical burst switching (OBS), can switch at the packet level. In this paper, we present the cost analysis of a DWDM multi-mode switching router architecture, which is able to accommodate EPS, OCS and OBS on the same router platform. We derive the cost model for the multi-mode switching router with respect to a reference electronic switching router. Our analysis shows that the multi-mode switching architecture provides a cost effective solution for scaling the number of DWDM channels.