A new architectural approach for optical burst switching networks based on a common control channel

The new architectural approach to Optical Burst Switching networks presented here features a common control channel and a node locally maintained network model. The Common Control Channel allows for a fast and efficient broadcast of the network Control Packets, which in turn are used by every node to update its Local Network Model. The Local Network Model allows efficient network resource planning as each node is aware of the reservation status intentions for the resources on each node. This paper describes the new C3-OBS architecture, evaluates its comparative performance to regular OBS, assesses the manageable bandwidth for a C3-OBS network and evaluates the common control channel manageable load. The concept of “Well-Informed Node” is defined as a metric of trustfulness on the information managed by the Local Network Model and the scope and application of C3-OBS networks are studied.