Efficient Integration of Switching Mechanisms in all-optical networks

Hybrid optical networks (HONs) are the combination of different switching mechanisms such as Optical Circuit Switching (OCS), Optical Burst Switching (OBS) and Optical Packet Switching (OPS). The basic idea behind HONs is to integrate the advantages of different switching mechanisms. HONs are classified into three classes as: (1) parallel hybrid optical networks, (2) integrated hybrid optical networks, (3) client-server hybrid optical networks. In this article, we describe these classes in detail and a new integrated hybrid optical network called EISM (Efficient Integration of Switching Mechanisms in all-optical networks) is introduced. The proposed EISM method could perform optimally while considering some implementation criteria; such criteria include network bandwidth utilization, implementation complexity and also the domain of network performance by combining four switching mechanisms-OCS, long-OBS, short-OBS and OPS.