Routing and QoS in an all-optical packet network

We present the ROMEO project, a collaboration between Alcatel and French Universities to design all optical core and access networks. Inside the core, the QoS requirements are a high throughput, low latency and bounded transport delays. Our new routing algorithm combines deflection routing and convergence routing. Deflection routing is known to avoid deadlocks but some packets never reach their destination within a finite delay while convergence routing provides a deterministic bounded delay for transport but has in general a very low network throughput. The mixed strategies we design allow an ending guarantee and are almost as efficient as deflection routing. We study the performance guarantees provided by this new algorithm using graph arguments for the ending property and simulations to give some insights into the throughput and the distribution of delays. We also show how we can optimize the two main components of the algorithm. Finally, we present how bursts are implemented inside the ROMEO core network. ROMEO bursts are not based on the usual reservation without acknowledgment mechanism. Using an Eulerian decomposition of the network topology and our routing algorithm, the bursts arrive with a probability one within a bounded delay, once they have been inserted