Shortest path prioritized random deflection routing in optical burst switched networks

Optical Burst Switching (OBS) aims to provide higher utilization and flexibility than circuit switching at a lower cost and complexity than the current optical paradigm of multiple Optical-Electronic-Optical conversions. We in-troduce a new routing protocol for Optical Burst Switch-ing, Shortest Path Prioritized Random Deflection Routing (SP-PRDR), that aims to lower blocking probabilities for all ranges of input loads, topologies and routing matrices while only using state information from traditional Inter-net Protocol technologies. We show, through analysis and simulation, that blocking probability in OBS networks is significantly reduced by SP-PRDR, with negligible impact on average delay. Additionally, unlike other schemes, we show that the worst case blocking probability of SP-PRDR is provably upper-bounded by the blocking probability of standard OBS.