Network Layer Performance of Hybrid Buffer-Based Optical Router

The design of optical routers is an important problem as they are integral parts of optical networks and high-speed data centers. Various types of optical switches without buffers, with input, shared and output buffering, and negative acknowledgment schemes are presented. In this paper, a shared buffering scheme where optical buffers both at the input and within the switch and electronic buffers are used for congestion control of the packets, as well as to minimize the re-transmission of the blocked packets, an input buffering scheme is considered. The Monte Carlo simulation is done to evaluate the packet loss performance of electronic and optical buffers. It has been found that the proposed buffering schemes improve the switch performance significantly.