HORNET-a packet-switched WDM metropolitan area ring network: optical packet transmission and recovery, queue depth, and packet latency

The Stanford OCRL has designed HORNET-a novel optical packet-switched WDM MAN. The key advantages of HORNET are efficient bandwidth sharing among a large number of users and lower equipment cost than SONET. We are constructing an experimental testbed to investigate the capabilities of HORNET. The experimental results confirm the HORNET node´s ability to transmit and receive optical packets with better than 10^-9 BER, to correctly route packets according to their recovered destination node address carried by subcarrier signals, and to effectively handle data clock recovery on a packet-by-packet basis. The network simulation results on the queue depth and the packet latency prove the benefits of the VOQ over the single FIFO queue at heavy traffic load