1st International ICST Workshop on Optical Burst/Packet Switching

Research Article

Control-Plane Congestion in OBS Networks

  • @INPROCEEDINGS{10.1109/BROADNETS.2006.4374320,
        author={Neil Barakat and Thomas E.  Darcie},
        title={Control-Plane Congestion in OBS Networks},
        proceedings={1st International ICST Workshop on Optical Burst/Packet Switching},
        publisher={IEEE},
        proceedings_a={WOBS},
        year={2006},
        month={10},
        keywords={},
        doi={10.1109/BROADNETS.2006.4374320}
    }
    
  • Neil Barakat
    Thomas E. Darcie
    Year: 2006
    Control-Plane Congestion in OBS Networks
    WOBS
    IEEE
    DOI: 10.1109/BROADNETS.2006.4374320
Neil Barakat1,*, Thomas E. Darcie1,*
  • 1: Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Victoria, P.O. Box 3055 Victoria, B.C. Canada M5S 3G4
*Contact email: nbarakat@uvic.ca, tdarcie@uvic.ca

Abstract

In this study, we examine control-plane throughput in optical burst switching (OBS) networks with electronic header processing. In a large-scale OBS network, headers arrive to the burst scheduler at a very high rate. This can potentially cause overloading of the core-node control-processor and lead to data loss if headers are not processed in a timely manner. In this work, we examine the effect of control-plane congestion on the overall loss performance of OBS networks. We present preliminary results that show how this congestion can become the primary source of loss and can ultimately limit the throughput and the scalability of the OBS system if not properly accounted for when designing the OBS network.