Estimating the effect of Wavelength Selective Switch latency on optical flow switching performance

Optical networks are well suited to support massive data exchanges between data centers. Elephant traffic flows can be routed over provisioned and dedicated lightpaths (optical flows) while other (mice) flows, which are routed by electronic switches, are unaffected. In some solutions, Wavelength-Selective Switches (WSSs) are employed in the optical nodes to individually route the lightpath towards its destination. WSSs take time to be switched and delay the lightpath setup time. In this paper, the authors compare three service policies for WSS devices aiming to reduce the lightpath setup and tear down times. The conventional service policy assumes that each setup (tear down) request is handled individually. Two other service policies assume that groups of setup (tear down) requests are handled together by the WSS. These policies are implemented in a discrete event simulator, which is used to estimate the end-to-end lightpath setup and tear down time across an arbitrary mesh network. Simulation results show that group service policies outperform the conventional policy at high loads. The grouping policies are useful to reduce the lightpath setup time especially in the presence of lightpaths that are frequently set up and have relatively short holding time (short duration of elephant-optical flows).