Towards optical packet switched MANs: Design issues and tradeoffs

Metropolitan Area Networks (MANs) are considered one of the best arenas for an early introduction of optical packet switching technologies. However, there is still no clear definition of how these technologies should be exploited in the design of innovative MANs. In this paper we consider different architectures that have been studied in the framework of the European Network of Excellence e-Photon/ONe and analyze their advantages and limitations. The main contribution of this work is the proposal of an analytical framework to compare these architectures in terms of resource demand when dimensioning them for a given traffic matrix and, from this analysis, discuss issues and trade-offs arising in the design of optical packet MANs.