Multihomed optical packet and circuit integrated network based on hierarchical address allocation

We have proposed an optical packet and circuit integrated (OPCI) network which provides over Tbps capacity with low power consumption by optical technologies and deals with diversity of services from best-effort service to quality of service guaranteed service by packet and circuit switching schemes. Recently, we developed an integrated optical packet and circuit switch (OPS/OCS) node and constructed an OPCI ring network testbed. The integrated OPS/OCS node has a function to encapsulate Internet Protocol (IP) packets coming from client networks into optical packets. In this paper, we discuss about how to incorporate OPCI networks into current IP-based wide area networks. For the first time, we experimentally demonstrate an OPCI network testbed incorporated into a multihomed network where IP addresses are hierarchically allocated. The multihomed network provides multiple links with different characteristics such as a 100 Gbps optical packet link for high capacity and shared bandwidth services, a 10 Gbps optical path link for high quality and dedicated bandwidth services, and a 10Gbit Ethernet link for low cost services. Therefore, users can choose adequate link technologies according to application or traffic conditions. We successfully verify that high definition video data is efficiently transported by switching link technologies in the multihomed network.