Power-Law Tradeoffs Between Optical and Electronic Switching

— Designing a transport network requires finding the most cost-effective combination of electronic and optical switching to support the given demands. This task is not trivial because the solution space is so large. Furthermore, there are many interacting design variables. In electronic switching, the cost is a function of the number of packets that are switched in the routers, which directly corresponds to the average hop count ( ¯H). The dominant cost of optical switching is a function of the total number of wavelengths used in the network (S) or the maximum number of wavelengths used on any fiber (W ) and the number of transceivers (L) used. In this paper, we show that there is a power-law relationship between each pair of these variables, and we quantify the power-law exponent for many different types of topologies. Our results allow a network designer to choose not only the most cost-effective combination of electronic and optical switching, but also the best fiber topology ...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2006
• Where: INFOCOM
• Authors: Huan Liu, Benjamin K. Chen, Fouad A. Tobagi
• Keywords: Communications, Cost-effective Combination, INFOCOM 2006, Interacting Design Variables, Optical Switching