BOUNDARY ROUTER FOR INTERCONNECTING COMMUNICATION NETWORKS ACROSS A LONG-HAUL OPTICAL NETWORK

摘要

A boundary router is presented for exchanging packets between a first data communication network and a second data communication network via a long-haul optical fiber communication network. Each optical fiber employed in the optical fiber communication network has, for a given transmission distance and modulation rate, a maximum available bandwidth or transmission capacity. The router includes a first interface for transmitting and receiving, at a first line rate, packets to and from the first data communication network, and a second interface for transmitting and receiving, at a second line rate different from the first line rate, packets to and from the long haul optical fiber communication network. Advantageously, the second line rate is selected such that a greater amount of the maximum available bandwith of each optical fiber in the long haul optical fiber communication network is utilized than at the first line rate. The most efficent line rate for the optical links of a given long haul network may be lower or higher than the first line rate. Hence, to arrive at the second line rate, the router may be configured to either aggregate the packets received via the first interface with packets received via one or more additional interfaces or, alternatively, to separate a single stream of packets received via the first interface into plural streams, while maintaining the integrity of individual flows. These aggregating and separating operations are transparent to the network layer.