Traffic Characteristics at OBS Edge Routers and its Impact on Dimensioning Wavelength Routed OBS Networks

The peakedness of the offered traffic is known as one of the key parameters when dimensioning connection oriented networks like PSTN or OBS networks. In this paper, we use measurement data from the edge of an IP backbone network in order to analyze the traffic characteristics of future wavelength routed OBS networks. The parameters of the wavelength requests and its impact on network dimensioning are analyzed with simulations. The model assumptions are validated with measurement data. The results show, how the maximum delay, the maximum burst size, the correlation of the packet arrival process and the variance of the packet arrival process influence the traffic characteristics of the wavelength path requests. We further show, how the resources that are needed in order to guarantee a given QoS depend on the peakedness of the wavelength path requests