A Framework for Absolute QoS Guarantees in Optical Burst Switched Networks

Abstract

We consider the problem of supporting absolute QoS guarantees in terms of the end-to-end burst loss in OBS networks. We present a parameterized model for wavelength sharing which provides for isolation among different traffic classes while also making efficient use of wavelength capacity through statistical multiplexing. We develop a heuristic to optimize the policy parameters for a single link of an OBS network. We also develop a methodology for translating the end-to-end QoS requirements into appropriate per-link parameters so as to provide network-wide guarantees. Our approach is easy to implement, it can support a wide variety of traffic classes, and is effective in meeting the QoS requirements and keeping the loss rate of best-effort and overall traffic low.