Design and implementation of ultra-low latency optical label switching forpacket-switched WDM networks

An ultra-low latency, high throughput internet protocol(IP) over wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) packet switching technology for next-generatio n internet (NGI) applications has been designed and demonstrated. This meth od overcomes limitations of conventional optical packet switching, which re quire buffering of packets and synchronization of bits, rind optical burst switching methods that require estimation of delays at each node and for ea ch path. An optical label switching technique was developed to realize flex ible bandwidth-on-demand packet transport on a reconfigurable WDM network. The aim was to design a network with simplified protocol stacks, scalabilit y, and data transparency, This network will enable the NGI users to send th eir data applications at gigabit/second access speed with low and predictab le latency (<1 <mu>sec per switch node), with a system capacity of beyond m ulti-Tb/s. Packet forwarding utilizes WDM optical headers that are carried in-band on the same wavelength and modulated out-of-hand in the frequency d omain.