Bypassing Route Strategy for Optical Circuits in OPS-Based Data Center Networks

Modeling and performance analysis of a data center network (DCN) combining optical packet switching (OPS) and agile optical circuit switching (OCS) in a unified platform are presented. Hybrid optoelectronic packet routers which combine optical switching fabric and electronic buffers are used, supporting 100 Gbit/s (25 Gbit/s × 4 wavelengths) optical packets. OCS transmission is implemented by a novel “express path,” (ExP) an instant wavelength path on demand, which enables certain flows following the ExP with no packet contention, whereas ordinary OPS packets are switched with a deflection routing algorithm and buffering for contention resolution. This architecture can support OCS for large and reliability-sensitive data transferring and OPS for latency-sensitive applications. The performance of the network is investigated via numerical simulations of top-of-rack switch (ToR)-to-ToR traffic in an N-dimensional (up to 4096 node) torus topology. We have made the following observations: 1) torus topology results in high throughput and can be scaled out by increasing the dimension; 2) contention resolution between OPS and agile OCS is needed and our proposed strategies enhance the overall performance; and 3) in a lightly to moderately loaded case of OPS traffic, more than 100 ExPs can be supported simultaneously with acceptable affect on OPS.

We develop an integrated optical packet and circuit switching node in which signaling via optical packet switching is implemented. We demonstrate 80 (8λ × 10) Gbit/s optical packet switching with <;1E-4 packet-loss-rate, 8-lightpaths establishment, and dynamic wavelength-resources control.

We propose and implement an enhanced moving average (MA) based dynamic resource allocation method for optical packet and circuit integrated (OPCI) networks. In the OPCI networks, optical packet switching (OPS) and optical circuit switching (OCS) share the total bandwidth in a fiber by allocating separate wavelength resources to them. In this work, we leverage an exponential moving average (EMA) as an enhanced MA. Every time a signaling process for path establishment or release occurs at a node, the proposed method employs the EMA of number of in-use paths to reallocate wavelengths to OCS and OPS while the conventional method employs the absolute number of in-use paths. When the EMA reaches or becomes less than a threshold value, the dynamic resource allocation is executed. As results of simulations and a verification experiment, we show that the proposed method can reduce the amount of routing processes without suffering from blocking of path establishments in comparison to the conventional method. In addition, it is expected that the proposed method can effectively allocate vaster amount of bandwidth to OPS without suffering from the blocking and achieve better system performances for OPS.

An optical packet and circuit integrated network (OPCInet) will allow diverse services, enhanced functional flexibility, and efficient energy consumption, as optical packet switching (OPS) and optical circuit switching (OCS) links are provided on the same infrastructure. In this paper, we design and develop a control system consisting of header processing for optical packets, signaling and routing for optical path setup, and wavelength resource control and link switching between OPS and OCS for the efficient use of resources. Our onboard optical packet header processor is capable of 16-bit longest prefix matching by embedding a 0.6W (5% of TCAM technology on the same condition), 200 million search-per-second (equivalent to 100 Gbps) forwarding engine LSI, and a statistical memory LSI for retaining the statistical information of processed headers. Reactive control automatically selects a packet or circuit link according to the statistical traffic information from the header processor and works with signaling for optical paths. We present an experimental demonstration of a new control system using a previously developed OPCInet testbed.

We study the fundamental properties of the hybrid combination of optical circuit switching (OCS) and electrical packet switching (EPS) used in an ultra-high-speed local area network (LAN) of the future, where chunks of data such as those containing non-compressed super-high-definition images are frequently transmitted as well as text-based data. We assume the logical topology of the OCS network in such a LAN to be single star in which the end-to-end connections are provided through a non-blocking optical matrix switch located at the center, while a conventional modest-speed EPS-based network such as Ethernet is co-installed to function as another data plane as well as the control plane of the OCS network. We refer to queueing theory in order to understand the fundamental performances issues of OCS and packet switching, and show that the hybrid use of OCS and EPS is very preferable especially when the variance of file size is very large. Simulation results show that the hybrid configuration can significantly outperform a network based on OCS only.

Multi-tenancy is a key feature of modern data centers. It allows for the existence of multiple independent virtual infrastructures, called virtual slices, on top of the same physical infrastructure, each of them specially tailored to the tenants' needs. In such a scenario, an optimal mapping of the virtual slices plays a capital role toward an efficient utilization of the data center network resources, potentially saving costs for the data center owner. However, due to the increasing trend of bringing optics to data center networks, specific virtual slice mapping mechanisms accounting for the particularities of the optical medium (e.g., wavelength continuity constraint) have to be investigated. For this, we present an integer linear programming (ILP) model for optimally mapping a set of virtual slices from different tenants in a hybrid optical circuit switching (OCS)/optical packet switching (OPS) data center network with the aim to minimize the necessary optical transponders to be equipped in the network. Additionally, we also present a lightweight heuristic for the cases in which the ILP model scalability is compromised. The benefits of the proposals are highlighted by benchmarking them against a pure OCS solution through extensive simulations.

Optical burst switching (OBS) is a switching technology that can efficiently operate in the optical core network using WDM technology and can also develop the future optical internet. The OBS switching technology presents a trade-off between the two switching technologies: optical circuit switching (OCS) and optical packet switching (OPS). This switching approach increases resource utilization compared with OCS technology and avoids the technological barriers of OPS networks. In OBS networks, many packets are assembled into one data burst at the edge node and a burst header packet (BHP) is sent before the burst transmission by an offset time in order to reserve the required resources in core nodes. This can cause security issues in the network and more specifically denial of service attacks that can occur if a source node is compromised. In this paper, we study a specific denial of service attack which we refer to as "BHP flooding attack", which prevents legitimate traffics from reserving the required resources at intermediate core nodes. We also propose the design of a reconfigurable BHP flooding countermeasure module that allows to counter against this type of attacks in an OBS network.

This paper presents performance evaluations and comparisons of different sharing approaches applied to the available optical bandwidth in data center networks. The recently proposed hybrid optical network concept, which combines multi-wavelength optical packet switching (OPS) and optical circuit switching (OCS) in WDM networks, is compared with a service-specific sharing model. Simulation results show that a careful design of dedicated channel allocation gives similar performance to a complete channel sharing with prioritized scheduling, which is however more flexible.

Hybrid optical networks (HONs) are the combination of different switching mechanisms such as Optical Circuit Switching (OCS), Optical Burst Switching (OBS) and Optical Packet Switching (OPS). The basic idea behind HONs is to integrate the advantages of different switching mechanisms. HONs are classified into three classes as: (1) parallel hybrid optical networks, (2) integrated hybrid optical networks, (3) client-server hybrid optical networks. In this article, we describe these classes in detail and a new integrated hybrid optical network called EISM (Efficient Integration of Switching Mechanisms in all-optical networks) is introduced. The proposed EISM method could perform optimally while considering some implementation criteria; such criteria include network bandwidth utilization, implementation complexity and also the domain of network performance by combining four switching mechanisms-OCS, long-OBS, short-OBS and OPS.

In optical switching paradigm, there are three approaches; optical circuit switching, optical packet switching, and optical burst switching (OBS). OBS is a technology that takes the best features of packet switching and circuit switching by providing a flexible infrastructure for carrying IP traffic and at the same time ensuring efficient utilization of the fiber link. In this paper we propose an effective contention resolution scheme to achieve minimum burst loss at core nodes. Algorithm of zero burst loss for bimodal burst switching is extended from single node star network topology to two node star topology. Scheduling at the core node, typically an optical cross connect (OXC), is performed in two modes i.e., Mode 0 & Mode 1. Mode 0 is for burst transmission between all directly connected edge nodes whereas Mode 1 is for burst transmission through remote core node to a particular destination edge node. Synchronization of the reservation request between the core nodes is a critical task in such a topology. In order to achieve minimum burst loss, using a small length of fiber delay line in recirculation mode results in an effective strategy.

All optical or hybrid electrical/optical switching data center network (DCN) architectures are capable of adapting the optical-layer topology to various network traffic demands based on the flexibility of optical switching technology. The topology reconfiguration strategies in previous research simply attempt to reconfigure optical circuit switching (OCS) links to offload heavier rack-to-rack traffic. However, due to the complex multi-layer interconnections and the various network traffic patterns in DCNs, the OCS links will not only offload the network traffic between its source and destination racks, but also forward the network traffic that belongs to the adjacent racks of the source and destinations racks. Previous strategies ignore the forwarding traffic and result in sub-optimal solutions. In order to overcome the shortcomings of previous methods and make full use of the OCS link resources in DCNs, an effective topology reconfiguration strategy named optical circuit bridge (OCBridge) has been proposed in our recent work. The main idea of our OCBridge is to take into account the traffic demands between the source and destination regions of each OCS link. In this paper, we first review our OCBridge, and then in simulation, we evaluate the performance of our OCBridge by testing it in two typical OCS-based DCNs, including OpenScale and Helios. Under our OCBridge, we analyze the outstanding network throughput performance of the DCNs and investigate the communication distance of traffic demands. Finally, in experiment, we deploy our OCBridge to a small prototype of OpenScale and verify that our OCBridge is capable of accelerating the distributed computing applications compared with previous topology reconfiguration strategies.

The paper presents the Multi-Service Photonic Network (MSPN) architecture, implementing the idea of optical circuit, burst and packet switching coexistence. We focus on the architecture using a layered perspective, and describe each layer functionality and technical implementation. Generic node structure gives a systematic description of MSPN functionalities through switching elements and transport interfaces. The implementation of new switching paradigms is particularly addressed by the discussion of the ways of transporting possibilities of optical packet/burst switching services over optical circuit switching services optical packet/burst. The MSPN support of different topological paradigms is of essential importance for the next generation optical transmission network deployment.

In this paper the end-to-end TCP performance of a hybrid network composed of multiple Ethernet Passive Optical Networks (EPONs) in the access segment connected to the same edge node of a core network is evaluated. Three possible core network paradigms are considered: Optical Circuit Switching (OCS), Optical Burst Switching (OBS) and Optical Packet Switching (OPS). TCP performance is evaluated through simulations with ns-2. The hybrid network scalability is assessed by varying the number of EPONs connected to the same edge node and the number of Optical Network Units (ONUs) per EPON. Interoperability issues between access and core are investigated and the impact of the most important network parameters is highlighted. The three transfer modes considered for the core network are properly compared under different input conditions, discussing the related trade-offs that may lead to the most suitable choice based on the specific application scenario. Finally, some design issues are investigated with reference to emerging Long-Range EPON (LR-EPON) solutions.

We have proposed an optical packet and circuit integrated (OPCI) network which provides over Tbps capacity with low power consumption by optical technologies and deals with diversity of services from best-effort service to quality of service guaranteed service by packet and circuit switching schemes. Recently, we developed an integrated optical packet and circuit switch (OPS/OCS) node and constructed an OPCI ring network testbed. The integrated OPS/OCS node has a function to encapsulate Internet Protocol (IP) packets coming from client networks into optical packets. In this paper, we discuss about how to incorporate OPCI networks into current IP-based wide area networks. For the first time, we experimentally demonstrate an OPCI network testbed incorporated into a multihomed network where IP addresses are hierarchically allocated. The multihomed network provides multiple links with different characteristics such as a 100 Gbps optical packet link for high capacity and shared bandwidth services, a 10 Gbps optical path link for high quality and dedicated bandwidth services, and a 10Gbit Ethernet link for low cost services. Therefore, users can choose adequate link technologies according to application or traffic conditions. We successfully verify that high definition video data is efficiently transported by switching link technologies in the multihomed network.

Dynamic optical interconnects using fast Optical Circuit Switches (OCS) are emerging as a scalable and energy efficient alternative to increasing network demands. Initial concerns regarding slow switching speeds of OCSs were recently overcome, with prototypes enabling circuit setup in a few microseconds. This can potentially broaden the classes of traffic patterns that can be carried efficiently by an alloptical interconnect. However, application performance on such newer interconnects has not been fully understood yet. In this paper, we explore the the gap between advances in faster OCS hardware and the potential success of such newer technologies in terms of application performance and cluster energy efficiency. We evaluate the performance of latencysensitive distributed applications running on a fast OCS environment, analyzing its impact to overall server and network energy efficiency. We also discuss scheduling inefficiencies of current fast OCSs and evaluate ideas to solve them. We find that while some distributed applications suffer minimal performance penalty when running on fast OCSs, more flexible schedulers, like the ones outlined in this paper, improve application performance and OCS efficiency by up to 2.44 times compared to the strategies in the literature. Dynamic optical interconnects using fast Optical Circuit Switches (OCS) are emerging as a scalable and energy efficient alternative to increasing network demands. Initial concerns regarding slow switching speeds of OCSs were recently overcome, with prototypes enabling circuit setup in a few microseconds. This can potentially broaden the classes of traffic patterns that can be carried efficiently by an all-optical interconnect. However, application performance on such newer interconnects has not been fully understood yet. In this paper, we explore the the gap between advances in faster OCS hardware and the potential success of such newer technologies in terms of application performance and cluster energy efficiency. We evaluate the performance of latency-sensitive distributed applications running on a fast OCS environment, analyzing its impact to overall server and network energy efficiency. We also discuss scheduling inefficiencies of current fast OCSs and evaluate ideas to solve them. We find that while some distributed applications suffer minimal performance penalty when running on fast OCSs, more exible schedulers, like the ones outlined in this paper, improve application performance and OCS efficiency by up to 2.44 times compared to the strategies in the literature.