Optical Burst Switching ( OBS ) { A New Paradigm for an

To support bursty traac on the Internet (and especially WWW) eeciently, optical burst switching (OBS) is proposed as a way to streamline both protocol and hardware in building the future generation Optical Internet. By leveraging the attractive properties of optical communications and at the same time, taking into account its limitations, OBS combines the best of optical circuit-switching and packet/cell switching. In this paper, the general concept of OBS protocols and in particular, those based on Just-Enough-Time (JET), is described, along with the applicability of OBS protocols to IP over WDM. Speciic issues such as the use of ber delay-lines (FDL) for accommodating processing delay and/or resolving connicts are also discussed. In addition, the performance of JET-based OBS protocols which use an ooset time along with delayed reservation to achieve eecient utilization of both bandwidth and FDLs as well as to support priority-based routing is evaluated.