Optical Burst Switched Networks

Optical burst switching (OBS) is a promising new technique that attempts to address the problem of efficiently allocating resources for "bursty" traffic. In OBS, incoming data is assembled into bursts at the edges of the network, and when the burst is ready to be sent, resources in the network are reserved only for the duration of the burst. The reservation of resources is typically made by an out-of-band one-way control message that precedes the burst by some offset time. By reserving resources only for the duration of the burst, a greater degree of utilization may be achieved in the network.