Architectural considerations for photonic IP router based upon optical code correlation

A photonic label switching router (PLSR) of which the photonic label proces sing is based upon optical code correlation, is investigated. To resolve th e electronic router's bottleneck in current Internet protocol (IP) over wav elength division multiplexing (WDM) networks, we will envision IP over phot onic networks in which the PLSRs totally replace the electronic routers. Th e:architectures of PLSR including the photonic label processing, the photon ic label swapping, and the optical switching and their optical implementati ons are studied. Results of proof-of-concept experiments for the photonic l abel processing and photonic label swapping Will confirm the feasibility to attain the target performance: the throughput of 100 Tb/s at least, the pr ocessing speed around 10 Gpacket/s, and the number of label entries up to 1 0 k.