CONTROL LAYER FOR MULTISTAGE OPTICAL BURST SWITCHING SYSTEM AND METHOD

摘要

The invention provides a control layer for an Optical Burst Switch (OBS) system, said system comprising at least one stage configured with a closed optical burst switch addressing scheme and one or more ports for sending or receiving data packets. The control layer comprises a control addressing scheme independent of the closed optical addressing scheme and means to provide interconnectivity for each port with every other port. In one embodiment there is provided a closed optical burst switch ring network. The control layer encapsulates or maps the optical data at a port into an independent packet format and passes the independent packet format into a queuing system for transmission by the optical burst switch ring network to a destination port.