Empirical characterization of uncongested optical lambda networks and 10GbE commodity endpoints

High-bandwidth, semi-private optical lambda networks carry growing volumes of data on behalf of large data centers, both in cloud computing environments and for scientific, financial, defense, and other enterprises. This paper undertakes a careful examination of the end-to-end characteristics of an uncongested lambda network running at high speeds over long distances, identifying scenarios associated with loss, latency variations, and degraded throughput at attached end-hosts. We use identical fast commodity source and destination platforms, hence expect the destination to receive more or less what we send. We observe otherwise: degraded performance is common and easily provoked. In particular, the receiver loses packets even when the sender employs relatively low data rates. Data rates of future optical network components are projected to outpace clock speeds of commodity end-host processors, hence more and more end-to-end applications will confront the same issue we encounter. Our work thus poses a new challenge for those hoping to achieve dependable performance in higher-end networked settings.