Performance evaluation of TCP over optical burst-switched (OBS) WDM networks

This paper studies the performance of TCP transport protocol over an optical burst-switched (OBS) wavelength division multiplexed (WDM) wide-area network. Typically, an OBS network consists of optical core routers and electronic edge routers connected by WDM links. At the network ingress nodes, IP packets are assembled into bursts that are routed through the core network and disassembled at the network egress nodes. This paper studies the effects of OBS network characteristics and parameters on TCP´s delay and throughput performance: (i) burstification (burst-assembly and disassembly) delays, (ii) data-burst scheduling and (iii) variation of burst packet parameters (i.e. burst size, burst time-outs), and (iv) burst drop probability. Detailed results based on an ns2-based simulator, that has been extended to incorporate WDM and OBS networking, are presented.