Patent ID: 7734176
Filing Date: 2010-06-08
Classification: H04J,H04L,H04Q

Abstract:
1. An edge node of an optical switching network, comprising: a stream slicer to slice a data block into data slices; a header pre-append block communicatively coupled to receive the data slices from the stream slicer and to append a slice header to each of the data slices; a scheduler coupled to schedule the data slices into fixed length time slots after an established optical path exists through the optical switching network; and a burst transmit block coupled to generate an optical burst for transmission onto the optical switching network, the optical burst to include the data slices with the appended slice headers, wherein the burst transmit block converts a group of the data slices from an electrical realm to an optical realm after the entire optical burst comprising the group of the data slices has been scheduled, wherein the burst transmit block is further coupled to generate the optical burst as a series of fixed length optical cells, each of the optical cells containing a fixed number of the data slices and appended slice headers, wherein the burst transmit block is further coupled to generate optical bursts through the established optical path through the optical switching network, wherein the established optical path includes a path defined by the execution of a Resource Reservation Protocol—Traffic Engineering (“RSVP-TE”) signaling protocol, wherein the RSVP-TE signaling protocol includes a hybrid optical bursts switching (“OBS”) network extension, wherein the scheduler schedules the data slices independent of the RSVP-TE signaling protocol.