The effect of optical cross connect switch time in interdomain all-optical networks

This thesis details the effect of the Optical Cross Connect (OXC) Switch Time upon the establishment of end-to-end lightpaths in all-optical networks. The OXC Switch Times introduces queueing delays to the signalling system, which has not been studied prior to this investigation. The effect of the OXC Switch Time is evaluated with different experimental results under a competitive network. By doing so, it is shown that under various traffic loads, the OXC Switch Time has a large impact on the lightpath setup time, making it take longer for lightpaths to be established.; Experiments show that when the OXC Switch Time is coupled with the Two-Phase Conservative (2PC) signalling algorithm and the Four-Phase Conservative (4PC) signalling algorithm, the overall blocking probability is left unchanged, but the 4PC scheme has an advantage in that the end-to-end establishment of a lightpath requires less time than that of the 2PC scenario. This is a distinct benefit of the 4PC method, unique with the introduction of the OXC Switch Time. Under the scenario studied, the Four-Phase Aggressive (4PA) signalling algorithm underperforms compared to the conservative methods with respect to blocking probability.; These results are tested in the OBGP Protocol which has been described in previous research. OBGP is a new method of managing and controlling resources across the interdomain and is a proposed solution to the interdomain control protocol problem. OBGP is an extension of BGP, making it a lightweight solution that is easily integrated into an existing carrier's network to provide BGP functionality and methods of controlling and managing the underlying all-optical network.