Offloading IP Flows onto Lambda-Connections

Optical networks are capable of switching IP traffic via lambda connections. In this way, big IP flows that overload the regular IP routing level may be moved to the optical level, where they get better Quality of Service (QoS). At the same time, the IP routing level is off-loaded and can serve smaller flows better. Within this context, this paper analyses the eligibility of IP flows to be moved to the optical level. In this analysis, we observe the percentage of IP traffic as well as the amount of IP flows moved to the optical level while using various definitions for an IP flow. The main contribution of this paper is to show how the amount of IP traffic transferred over lambda-connections considerably depends on the definition used for a flow.