Deflection routing effectiveness in full-optical IP packet switching networks

This work is based on the optical switch architecture proposed in [M.M Renaud, et al., April 1997] [SBregni, G Guerra, and A Pattavina, Nov. 2002] to handle variable-length packets such as IP datagrams. This optical switch is based on an AWG device to route packets and is equipped with a fiber delay-line stage as optical input buffer. Unfortunately, this switch would require considerable buffering capability to achieve acceptable performance. A possible solution, studied in this paper, is to implement efficient packet deflection inside the optical network as a mean for solving packet contentions on outputs of optical switches. Thus, optical transport networks have been simulated to assess deflection effectiveness, based on a traffic model adherent to real IP traffic measurement. Full-mesh and wheel network topologies have been considered, comparing results to assess deflection effectiveness.