We propose a novel manner to perform optical packet switching which does not require any prior electronicsignaling or header processing. The proposed packet switchingscheme can be implemented by means of a new optical deviceable to handle packet contention in the optical domain byimplementing a first-come first-served policy. This simple deviceis based exclusively on off-the-shelf components and can be usedto build optical packet switches, that we refer to as switch-combiners. The latter can in turn be used to build all-opticalpacket networks. Using variants of the Engset model, we analysethe impact of network load on the performance of data traffic.The results are illustrated on the practically interesting cases ofaccess and data center networks.
Joint work with T. Bonald, D. Cuda and L. Noirie