The IRIS optical packet router

We present a load-balanced packet router with an all-optical data plane and a decentralized control plane. The router, whose architecture scales up to 256 Tb/s with current technology, consists of two space switches based on wavelength converters and large N × N AWGs, surrounding a deterministic time buffer. First experimental results have been obtained in a 2 × 2 testbed with monolithically integrated SOA-based 40 Gb/s wavelength converters and fiber-delay line-based time buffers.