Routing strategies for a hybrid network architecture

Recent developments in BISDN are possible due to the advances made in high-speed optical fiber communication and high-capacity packet switch design. However, due to the high cost of physical deployment of fiber cables, the optical fiber backbone network is usually closer to a tree topology than a densely connected one. This in turn implies that an average information packet has to be processed by a large number of intermediate switches and hence, the packet switches have to be of enormous size. The authors adapt a previously proposed (M. Gerla et al., 1989) and the associated network to reduce the processing burden and hence, the load and size of the packet switches. They then propose routing algorithms for this hybrid network architecture and using simulation, present the performance results of those algorithms