A scheduled approach to optical flow switching in the ONRAMP optical access network testbed

Optical flow switching (OFS) in large-scale wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) networks is an emerging technology enabled by rapid advancement in optical switch and transceiver technology. It is a connection oriented service involving dynamic creation of relatively short (one second or less) duration optical lightpaths between users that desire a high-rate, high quality of service (QoS) connection. A flow switched transaction bypasses electronic routers along its path alleviating the potential load on the routers. This provides a twofold benefit. We have designed and implemented OFS in the NGI ONRAMP testbed. NGI ONRAMP is an acronym for next generation Internet optical network for regional access using multi-wavelength protocols. It is an optical access area network deployed in the metropolitan Boston area. For OFS in such large-scale networks, a critical issue is that of connection setup. In ONRAMP, we have taken the view that it is vital for the network management and control system to have reliable network state information to make decisions about routing and wavelength assignment.