A unified model for synchronous and asynchronous FDL buffers allowing closed-form solution

Novel switching approaches like Optical Burst/Packet Switching have buffering implemented with Fiber Delay Lines (FDLs). Previous performance models of the resulting buffer only allowed for solution by numerical means, and only for one time setting: continuous, or discrete.With a Markov chain approach, we constructed a generic framework that encompasses both time settings. The output includes closed-form expressions of loss probabilities and waiting times for a rather realistic setting. This allows for exact performance comparison of the classic M/D/1 buffer and FDL M/D/1 buffer, revealing that waiting times are (more than) doubled in the case of FDL buffering.