A Contention-Free Tbit/sec Packet-Switching Architecture for ATM over WDM Networks

Future high-speed switches and routers will be expected to support a large number of ports at high line rates carrying traffic with diverse statistical properties. Accordingly, scheduling mechanisms will be required to handle Tbit/sec aggregated capacity while providing quality of service (QoS) guarantees. In this paper a novel high-capacity switching scheme for ATM/WDM networks is presented. The proposed architecture is contention-free, scalable, easy to implement and requires no internal “speedup.” Non-uniform destination distribution and bursty cell arrivals are examined when studying the switching performance. Simulation results show that at an aggregated throughput of 1Tbit/sec, low latency is achieved, yielding a powerful solution for high-performance packet-switch networks. key words: Tbit routers, scheduling, QoS (quality-of-service),