Methods of Traffic Load Balancing in High-Speed Optical Systems

Abstract

Nowadays, in enterprise network can be seen new type of high-speed optical systems, before used only as highspeed transportation systems in WANs. Because of higher and higher demand for bandwidth in enterprise LANs, data centers, etc., optical systems like xWDM becoming to be common. This have to lead to new network design based on load balancing methods not generally used in this kind of environment. Because IP traffic is also becoming more sensitive to delay and reliability, it's necessary to make proper configuration of network load balancing technologies. Unfortunatelly, available bandwidth coming from high-speed optical systems is often underutilized and only proper design and configuration can bring the benefit of higher bandwidth and safer links. This article describe current situation in enterprise networks and suggest, how to utilize high speed optical systems in cooperation with load balancing methods in current enterprise networks.