Traffic Load Uniformity in Optical Packet Switched Networks

TL;DR

This paper analyzes how traffic load uniformity affects packet loss in optical packet switched networks, revealing that asymmetric traffic patterns can reduce packet loss compared to symmetric ones.

Contribution

It introduces analytical models based on the Engset traffic model and demonstrates that asymmetric traffic patterns lead to lower packet loss in OPS nodes.

Findings

Asymmetric traffic patterns result in less packet loss.

Traffic load uniformity significantly influences packet loss.

Analytical models are developed for OPS network analysis.

Abstract

A crucial issue in Optical Packet Switched (OPS) networks is packet loss due to contentions. In this paper we study how traffic load uniformity influences the packet loss in a single OPS node. Traffic load uniformity is a measure of the load asymmetry a specific output link in an OPS node receives from its input sources. We develop analytical models based on the Engset traffic model. As a major contribution of this paper, we show that an asymmetric traffic pattern results in less packet loss compared to a symmetric traffic pattern for a single output link in an OPS node.