A hybrid optical switching approach

The optical circuit switching (OCS) is a sophisticated technology widely deployed in current optical networks, and has many advantages to transport the stable and long-duration traffic flows. However, it is not suitable for bursty data traffic. On the other hand, an alternate technology, optical burst switching (OBS), well addresses the bursty IP traffic transport, but not suitable for stable and large flows. To effectively transport both types of traffic, a hybrid optical switching approach is proposed in this paper to combine OCS and OBS to exploit the merits of both technologies. The performance has been evaluated in terms of throughput and blocking probability.