TeraNet: a multigigabit-per-second hybrid circuit/packet-switched lightwave network

摘要

Abstract: TeraNet is an experimental optical network which offers user access rates as high as one Gigabit per second (Gbps). The network provides both circuit switching and ATM packet switching in a hierarchical fashion. Circuit switching is accomplished through the use of tunable optical WDMA/Subcarrier-FDMA channels. An overlaid multihop technique that uses a sub-set of the underlying optical circuits, constructs a packet switching environment. Circuit switched services interface to the passive optical 'ether' through Media Interface Units (MIU). A 3 $MUL 3 switching node called Network Interface Unit (NIU), with 1 Gbps capacity per port, is used as an ATM access port to the packet switching layer. The ATM overlaid network incorporates a traffic control architecture that supports multiple traffic classes. Output buffers and bandwidth are shared according to a resource allocation concept called Asynchronous Time Sharing (ATS).!12