Deflection routing in IP optical networks

This paper deals with optical packet switching in a full-IP transport network scenario. Given the technological limits of accomplishing packet buffering in the optical domain, deflection routing is here explored as an alternative technique for resolving packet contentions without buffering packets. Two different network topologies have been considered here, that is a regular six-node network with different connectivity factors and the classical NSF network. A limited amount of optical buffering is considered in the switching nodes that performs both input queuing and shared queuing of packets to be switched. The performance improvements that can be obtained by deflection routing have been evaluated considering different methods for choosing the alternative paths where to deflect packets that cannot be transmitted onto the shortest path to the addressed destination.