Optical packet switching with multiple path routing

The performance of packet-switching wavelength routed optical networks critically depends on packet contentions at the intermediate routers. This paper shows through simulations that deflection routing is an effective technique for packet-switching wavelength routed optical networks with irregular meshed topologies. It is shown that multiple path routing (MPR) as the deflection rule mitigates the blocking of packets substantially in cross-connected all-optical networks leading to a significant reduction in hardware volume and cost of all-optical IP routers. The effectiveness of the blocking reduction critically depends on the network topology, and meshed topologies with a high number of interconnections benefit of the largest gain from deflection routing. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.