Photonics for Switching and Routing

The ongoing growth of data traffic from existing and new applications poses a challenge to the packet switching network infrastructure. High capacity transport can be achieved in such networks by using dense wavelength division multiplexed systems and reconfigurable optical add drop multiplexers allow the optical layer to provision wavelength based circuits between routing nodes. However construction of high capacity packet routers provides significant scaling issues due to complexity, interconnect and thermal limits. In this paper, we will outline the some of the challenges facing the construction of such future routers and will describe the role photonics can have in overcoming these problems. We describe how fast wavelength switching can provide a high capacity distributed switch fabric that will allow packet routers to scale to higher capacities. The fast wavelength switching can be seen as the packet analog of wavelength based circuit switching of today's transparent optical networks.