POW – Packets Over Wavelengths

 

Examining network-wide architectures and protocols to support packet use of WDM.

Packet over Wavelengths (POW) is a project that examines architectures for optical packet routing using protocols for the dynamic allocation of Wavelength Division Multiplexed (WDM) paths. As part of this project, we have developed a protocol called the Simple Wavelength Assignment Protocol (SWAP) which enables the establishment of WDM paths. We are currently enhancing SWAP and evaluating its behavior under different traffic conditions.

People

Joe Bannister, Joe Touch – co-PIs

Purushotham Kamath, Stephen Suryaputra – students

Key technologies

To evaluate the benefits of  Packet over Wavelengths, we have modified the Network Simulator tool to support the SWAP protocol.

The SWAP simulator source code and scripts are available here.
The system is based on the Network Simulator (ns-allinone-2.1b6) and was evaluated using the lbl-pkt-5 traces, NLANR traces, and New Zealand (Auckland) – US link traces .

Papers