High performance optical switch test-bed for multicast applications

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Conventional Internet networks perform packet multicasting in a single routing context using a single multicast address space. This will result in various multicast streams for different customers, thus the use of multiple routers which can eventually lead to multiple routing contexts and overlapped address spaces. Optical networks on the other hand, are hindered by the fact that light bits cannot be stored, and thus have to convert at the optical element level the optical flow in sequences of bits which being electrical in nature can be stored. All-optical circuits tend to be inefficient for traffic that has not been groomed or statistically multiplexed, and all-optical packet switching will not be practical until cost-effective optical buffering and header parsing implementations are commercially available. The new high-performance optical switch for multicast applications of Viscore, does not require optical buffering or packet-level parsing, and it is more efficient than circuit switching when the sustained traffic volume is separated in optical wavelengths. The proof of concept optical switches of Viscore will be therefore connected to the Network Computing and Control Technologies (NCCT) research laboratory of the University of Ottawa, in order to develop new protocols and switching technologies. At the same time, a test bed for determining the efficiency and other performance parameters of the optical switches, when multicast sessions are deployed in the real network of NCCT, will be designed and implemented.The project proposal deals with an active area of research of communications and data industry,related to data publishing via multicast channels. This solves the long standing problem of processing data while sent simultaneously to a multitude of users. The optical switching on mulch-channels is important for a number of industries that deal with sensitive data, including the banking, the healthcare sector and the financial services industry.This is a timely undertaking which offers a multitude of potential benefits to Viscore, the University of Ottawa, and Canada.