IP over Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM) networking is a promising architecture to support the expected huge bandwidth demand. Optical Burst Switching (OBS) integrates IP and WDM by leveraging the intelligence and processing capability of electronics as well as the virtually unlimited capacity and low per-bit cost of optical communications. OBS is a technical compromise that does not require optical buffering or packet-level parsing, and it is more efficient than circuit switching when the sustained traffic volume does not consume a full wavelength.

 

Since TCP is the prevailing mechanism for data transmission today, and its variations will likely remain dominant in the next generation Optical Internet based on OBS, understanding the performance of the current TCP implementations in OBS network becomes and important issue.

 

My project is to study TCP performance in OBS networks, and try to find the improvements that need to be made to current TCP/IP implementation in order to take full advantage of high-speed optical networks.

 

OPNET Modeler’s object-oriented modeling approach and graphical editors mirror the structure of actual networks and network components. Modeler has the full support for the WDM optical network and the TCP/IP transport protocol. I believe that Modeler is very suitable for my project. My plan is to create an OBS optical network in Modeler and study the performance of the TCP/IP traffic over the OBS layer. Furthermore, try to improve the performance by introduce some new schemes.