Congestion control in an optical burst switched network

摘要

The present invention proposes a method to control congestion in an Optical Burst Switched (OBS) network. The method consists in dropping probabilistically a data burst based on an average delay applied to a set of data bursts. Data bursts start being preventively dropped when the average delay goes beyond a pre-determined threshold. At the edge of the OBS network, one may further segregate data packets into 2 distinct flows, depending on whether or not they convey congestion responsive traffic, each flow being next aggregated into distinct data bursts. The content type of a data burst is indicated in some field of the burst header packet (BHP), allowing the core routers downwards to selectively drop data bursts.