Service differentiation in OFS network: Performance analysis

This paper focuses on the design and analysis of QoS-based scheduling mechanism for service differentiation in Optical Flow Switching (OFS) networks. We consider two types of traffic flows: (i) delay-constraint flows (high priority flows) and (ii) Best-effort flows (low priority flows). In OFS, only optical cross connects (OXCs) are used for the switching function in the data plane and there is no buffering and processing involved at intermediate routes. Data flows through a simple all-optical data plane without any electronic processing except for the control plane. The flow QoS-based scheduling mechanism is to be implemented in the control plane using a priority queueing. We develop an analytical model to evaluate the performance of the considered OFS network using the proposed scheduling mechanism. Simulations are also conducted in order to validate the obtained analytical results. Numerical results have shown the efficiency of the QoS-based scheduling mechanism in satisfying delay constraint for DC flows especially when the contention for resource becomes noticeable (i.e. high network load).