Transport Layer Performance of Hybrid Networks Combining Multiple EPONs and OBS

In this paper the performance of a hybrid opticalnetwork composed of multiple Ethernet Passive Optical Networks(EPONs) at the access connected to an Optical Burst Switching(OBS) core is evaluated. The EPONs make use of the IPACTalgorithm to manage the upstream transmissions, whereas theOBS edge node employs a time-based assembly scheme forburst aggregation. This leads to interoperability issues betweenaccess and core which are investigated in this paper. Thehybrid network scalability is proved by assessing the transportlayer performance with different numbers of EPONs served bythe same burst assembler and different numbers of OpticalNetwork Units (ONUs) per EPON. The impact of the maindesign parameters affecting the interaction between EPONs andOBS is estimated. The transport layer performance is evaluatedconsidering heterogeneous traffic flows by simulating both TCPand UDP sources