Networks with Small (Optical) Buffers

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This research addresses the feasibility of core networks in which routers have very small buffering capacity, say in the range of 10-50 packets. This is particularly interesting for optical packet switched (OPS) networks in which routers are expected to have all-optical buffering. Our research addresses several aspects:

We develop novel edge traffic conditioning mechanisms that help reduce loss in the small core buffers. In the context of OPS networks, we have developed an analytic and simulation framework to evaluate the efficacy of edge traffic conditioning. Our contributions in this area have appeared at ATNAC'04, HPSR'05, Infocom'06, and a journal version is under review. The supporting simulation code is available here.
We develop an understanding of the performance of TCP traffic in networks with very small buffers. Our contributions in this area have appeared in ICoN'06 and ANTS'07.
We show an interesting phenomenon when TCP and real-time traffic are multiplexed at links with small buffers: there exists a regime in which loss for real-time traffic goes up with increasing buffer size. Our study of this phenomenon has appeared in Infocom'08 (Student Workshop) and at IWQoS'08.