The Control-Plane Stability Constraint in Optical Burst Switching Networks

In this letter, we consider the performance of optical burst switching networks with electronic header processing. We find that the finite processing capacity of the electronic core-node header processors can have a significant impact on the maximum throughput and minimum burst length that can be supported. We derive necessary conditions for control-plane stability in OBS networks in terms of the physical design parameters of the system. Based on this analysis, we present a general design procedure and expressions for determining the minimum average burst length to ensure that the control-plane does not become the throughput bottleneck of the OBS system