Forward Redundancy: A loss recovery mechanism for optical burst-switched networks

Optical burst switching is one of the most promising new optical transport paradigms for efficiently transporting data over an all-optical network. In this paper, we discuss Forward Redundancy as a candidate for loss recovery in an optical burst-switched network. We develop a simulation model to investigate the proposed forward redundancy loss recovery mechanism and to compare the performance of our proposed mechanism with the existing retransmission-based backward loss recovery mechanism. Our results show that the proposed forward redundancy mechanism significantly reduces packet loss as compared to a retransmission-based backward loss recovery mechanism, without the need for large ingress electronic buffers or high retransmission delays.