2009 Fourth International Conference on Computer Sciences and Convergence Information Technology

Novel Closed-Loop Flow Controls

Based on Virtual Path Concept
in OBS Networks
Yoshihiro Nishino1 ,Yugo Ikeda 1 , Ryosuke Takahashi 1 , Youngbok Choi 2 and Hiromi Okada 1
1 Faculty of Engineering, Kansai University 3-3-35 Yamate-cho, Suita, Osaka, 564-8680 Japan
2 Tongmyong University 535, Yongdang-Dong, Nam-Gu, Busan, 608-711 Korea
E-mail: nishino@jnet.densi.kansai-u.ac.jp
Abstract: Optical Burst Switching (OBS) has
been proposed to realize the next generation Internet
on the Wavelength Di vision Multiplexi ng (WDM)
network technology. Optical Burst Switching is an
ultra high speed switching technology for optical
fiber networks but has the data burst contention
problem. In this paper, we introduce Virtual Path
(VP) concept addressing burst contenti on resolutions
in OBS networks. We propose two novel flow
control schemes, named Static Inter Arrival Time
Flow Control (S-IAT) and Dynami c Inter Arrival
Time Flow Control (D-IAT). S-IAT keeps the dat a
burst contention rat e in an acceptable level on OBS
networks. Based on S-IAT, D-IAT achieves almost
the same data burst contention rate and higher
throughput than S-IAT by using the data burst loss
rate threshold. We will show the availabil ity of
proposed schemes by computer simulations.
1. INTRODUCTION
In these years, the traffic volumes of backbone
networks have been exponentially increasi ng due to
popularization of the Internet. This growth of the
traffi c volumes derives an anxiety that the backbone
networks will be bankrupted. In order to solve this
problem, several optical technologies have been
studied. The most important schemes of them are
Wavelength Routing, Opti cal Packet Switching and
Optical Burst Switching.
First, Wavel ength Routing (WR) [1, 2] based on
WDM (Wavelength Division Multipl exing)
point -to-point system is an optical layer switching
technique. WR resembles the circuit switching
scheme since an end-to-end connection are
established with one li ght path corresponding one
wavelength. So it is restricted to efficient use of
wavelengths. Second, Opti cal Packet Switching
(OPS) [3, 4, 5] belonging to packet switching
scheme is also allowed communication in optical
layer. In OPS, payloads are buffered in optical layer
during header packets are processed in electrical
layer. Thus it achieves st atistic multiplexing but it
needs optical random access memories (RAM).
Third, Optical Burst Switching (OBS) [6, 7] is
expect ed as a realizabl e switching t echnique. It
allows access networks high network resource
utilizations and high cost performance. Fig1 shows a
general OBS Network. In OBS, an OBS edge node
assembles IP packets from access networks and
composes a data unit, named data burst. Then, the
OBS edge node creates a control packet containing
routing information, and data burst’s informati on and
send it into the OBS network before sending the
corresponding data burst. The data burst is sent into
the OBS network after an interval ti me, named offset
time. The control packet arrived at a core node is
converted from optical to electri cal (O/E) and is
processed according to its priorit y. The core node
reser ves an output channel for the following data
burst, converts the control packet from electri cal to
optical (E/O), and forwards it to the next node. The
following data burst is allowed to get through the
core node wit hout any O/E/O conversion. The data
burst arrived its destination node are disassembl ed to
IP packets again and they are sent to access networks
individually.
Fig1 general OBS Network

978-0-7695-3896-9/09 $26.00 © 2009 IEEE 891

DOI 10.1109/ICCIT.2009.181

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Fig 2 Control flow of OBS algorithm
Fig 2 shows the control flow of OBS algorithm.
Here, the offset time pl ays the important rate in OBS.
The offset time are shrinking as the control packet
gets through the core nodes Note that the offset time
allows statistic multipl exing without optical RAMs.
Consequentl y OBS achi eves high wavelength
utilization and high cost performance. However OBS
has the data burst contenti on problem when more
than one data burst reserve the same output channel
at the same time. The data bursts that cannot reserve
an output channel are usually lost. The data burst
contention directl y affects the network performance.
Indeed each burst lost means a wasted bandwidth,
increased delivery delay and decreased throughput.
Some researches have proposed effici ent schemes to
reduce the data burst contenti on problem [8]-[12].
In this paper, we introduce the Virtual Path (VP)
concept which has been used in Asynchronous
Transfer Mode (ATM) networks [13]. VP achieves
more sensiti ve controls than Dat agram (DG) in OBS
networks. 㩷 The features of VP are as follows.
1. VP achieves sensitive services. For example, it
can determine the optimum throughput for each path.
2. VP settles routes to destinations. So, it is
traceable which nodes are in congestion state at the
edge node.
Furthermore, we propose new control schemes
which allow a cont rollable data burst contention rate,
named Static Inter-Arrival Time (S-IAT) and
Dynamic Inter-Arrival Time (D-IAT) flow controls.
S-IAT flow cont rol allows to keep the data burst
contention rate in an acceptable level simply. S-IAT
aims t o prevent OBS network from the frequent
occurrence of data burst cont entions even in the
overl oaded traffic condition. However, S-IAT does
carry out the excess cont rol in sli ghtly loaded traffi c
condition.
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The rest of this paper i s organi zed as follows.
Section 2 presents static inter-arri val time. Section 3
presents d ynamic inter-arri val time. Secti on 4
presents simulation results and anal ysis that probe
the efficiency of our proposed scheme. And final
section concludes this work.
2. Static inter-arrival time flow control
We propose a simple static flow control al gorithm,
named Static Inter-Arri val Ti me Flow Control
(S-IAT), which keeps the data burst cont ention rate
in an acceptable area. S-IAT is composed data burst
contention rate threshold and inter-arri val time flow
control.
Data burst contention rate threshold
Fig 3 shows Critical threshold for OBS network
performance as the data burst contention rate. X-axis
shows load explained latter and Y-axis shows data
burst contention rate respecti vely. According t o this
figure, the data burst contention rate keeps
increasing wit h the load. To keep the network
performance in ideal, [14] divided the network
performance in terms of the data burst contention
rate into two parts, Acceptable area and Critical area.
The acceptable area is defi ned as that the data burst
contention rate is enough l ow and dropped data
bursts are recoverable with retransmission control.
On the other hand, the criti cal area is defined as that
the data burst cont ention rate i s too high even
though dropped bursts should be retransmitted by
edge nodes. These areas are divided with a threshold,
named data burst contention rate threshold. It means
the data burst contention rat e is allowed up to its
threshold in our study. And the load when the data
burst contention rate is equal to its threshold is
defined as load threshold. It means when the load is
below the load threshold, the data burst contention
rate should be in the accept able area.
Fig 3 critical threshold OBS network performance
 Inter-arrival time flow control
Inter-arrival time flow control is the simplest flow
control technique. Fig4 represents inter-arrival time
flow control algorithm. In S-IAT OBS network, each
data burst is sent at allocated ti me interval.
Fig4 Inter-arrival time flow control
In S-IAT OBS network, each source destination
pair has a bidirectional virtual path (VP). Therefore
S-IAT OBS network allows fai rly all ocating optimum
wavelength capacities to each VP. Each inter-arrival
time is calculated with the assi gned wavelength
capacit y as follows,
BS
IATsrc−dest =
WCsrc−dest × LT
where IAT, BS, WC and LT mean Inter-Arri val
Time, fixed Burst Size assigned Wavelength
Capacity and Load Threshold respectivel y. We use
fixed burst size and fixed time interval. In S-IAT
OBS network, edge nodes send data bursts according
to the all ocated inter-arrival time to each VP.
Consequentl y all edge nodes work in order to keep
the data burst contention rate in the acceptable area.
3. Dynamic inter-arrival time flow control
The second proposed scheme is Dynami c
inter-arrival time flow control (D-IAT) which aims
to achieve higher throughput than S-IAT. The basi c
idea of D-IAT is same as S-IAT. In D-IAT OBS
network, core node request edge nodes to decrease
traffi c which gets through a congested link when it is
detect ed. Each edge node which received a flow
control request packet decreases or keeps target VP’s
throughputs so that every edge nodes keep fair share.
D-IAT is composed of t hree el ements, Flow Control
Request Packet(FCRP), D-IAT core node, and D-IAT
edge node.
Flow Control Request Packet(FCRP)
In D-IAT OBS, D-IAT core nodes create Flow
Control Request Packets (FCRP) to request D-IAT
edge nodes of flow control. FCRP is sent on a
control channel same as control packets. Therefore it
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is desirable to be as small as possible. Fig5 shows a
FCRP format. Source, destination address virtual
path identifier have 8 bit respectivel y.
Fig5 Flow Control Request Packet
D-IAT core node
The function of D-IAT core node for congestion
control is composed two steps, to oversee out put
links and to determine to send FCRPs.
The first step of D-IAT core node function is to
oversee each output li nk so as not t o be in
congestion state. D-IAT core nodes achieve more
sensiti ve and more efficient control than S-IAT due
to overseeing each output link. For instance, D-IAT
core nodes request ust related edge nodes to the
(1)
congestion so that control channels are saved for
other control packets and not to request unrelat ed
edge nodes. We defined that the number of
transmitted data burst T and dropped one D for
output link O are kept for a constant time Ǎ t. Data
burst contention rate for output link Co i s calculat ed
as follows.
CO =
∑D O
∑ (D
(2)
O + TO )
Co is calculated with simple moving average.
Si mple moving average can interpret accurate data
burst contention rate regardless burst y traffic due to
applying a constant t erm. Fig 6 shows the idea of
moving average. If Ǎ t is longer than a proper one,
then a response speed of moving average for
calculation of data burst contention rate will be
impervious and consequently QoS i n terms of data
burst contention rate will be deteriorated. On the
other hand, in a case that Ǎ t is too short, a
congestion state will be detected too sensitivel y and
consequently FCRPs will be sent wastefull y. Note
that Ǎ t affects the accuracy of data burst contention
rate. D-IAT core nodes interpret its output link as
congestion state when the data burst CO exceeds the
data burst contention rate threshold. Thi s calculation
is tri ggered whenever a data burst i s dropped.
The second step of D-IAT core node function is to
determine to send FCRPs. D-IAT core nodes need to
893
 wait for FCRP’s effect s until they reach their
destination D-IAT edge nodes due to propagation
delay. In case of Fi g 6 for example, Co exceeds the
data burst contenti on rate threshold and D-IAT core
node send FCRPs at t0. However Co keeps
increasing until they reach their destination edge
nodes. If FCRPs are sent regardless of their
propagation delay, D-IAT edge nodes will decrease
their flow rate even though they do not need. In
order t o avoid this situation, D-IAT core node waits
to send FCRPs for the maximum round trip t ime
(RTT). The maximu m RTT is calculated from VPs
which get through this congested output link.
Fig6 simple moving average
D-IAT edge node
-IAT edge nodes send data burst s according to
assigned fixed inter-arri val times t o each VP.
However due to bursty traffic, edge nodes re uire
large-scale electrical buffers whi ch are enough to
buffer IP packets or flexible transmi ssion control.
D-IAT edge node based on -IAT achieves AI D
(Additive Increase ultiplicative Decrease) and fair
share throughput control. Throughput control in
D-IAT edge nodes is divided into two parts, regul ar
and congestion.
In regular state, D-IAT edge node receives no
FCRPs which notify incidence of congesti on. If the
electrical buffers have enough IP packets to
construct data bursts, they should be transmitted as
soon as possible for network resource and del ay.
Thus, D-IAT edge nodes decrease each VP’s
inter-arrival time during regular state. The
decrement of inter-arri val time affects network
performance. In congestion state, on the other hand,
D-IAT edge node receives FCRP from a congested
node. If D-IAT edge node keeps decreasing
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inter-arrival time, the congested output link will be
worse and dat a bursts will be increasingl y dropped.
In order to sol ve this problem, D-IAT edge node puts
current inter-arri val times back to ori ginally ones
which are used in -IAT. ote that the D-IAT edge
node increases the only inter-arri val time on
congested VPs. Conse uently other non-congest ed
VPs have been affected.
4. Simulation Results and Analysis
In this study, we perform a number of simulations
on a mesh network in order to evaluate the
performance of the proposed congestion avoidance
scheme. In this simulation, we consider a NSFNET
topology with 14 nodes as shown in Fig 7. In this
model, it is assumed that a single fi ber has 16
channels and each channel is operating at 2.5Gbps. A
static virtual path is chosen between each pair of
nodes. The switching time and the processing time of
a control packet in each node are set to 5Ǵ s. Data
bursts are generated according to a Markov Modulate
Poisson Process (MMPP) and have a fixed size
(100Kbit). Simulation time i s set to 500,00,00Ǵ s.
Also it is assumed that no intermediate buffers, no
wavelength conversion and no deflection routing are
used in the nodes. In this study, the data burst
contention rate is set to 0.05.
Fig 7 NSFNET with 14 nodes
In the first simulation, we investigat e the
throughput characteristic which is distilled from
time 250000Ǵ s. Fig8 shows the throughput function
during 250000Ǵ s to 260000Ǵ s. X-axis and Y-axis
show sampling time and throughput respectivel y. In
Fi g8, we can see that the throughput is sl owly
increasing during non-congestion state and drops
shapel y when FCRPs are transmitted. D-IAT edge
nodes achieve AIMD and it is proved that the
network resources of D-IAT are used effectivel y.
 㪊㪅㪌㪌㪜㪂㪇㪏
0.2
㪊㪅㪌㪇㪜㪂㪇㪏 Conventional
㪊㪅㪋㪌㪜㪂㪇㪏 S-IAT

Data Burst Contention Rate

㪊㪅㪋㪇㪜㪂㪇㪏 0.15 D-IAT
㪫㪿㫉㫆㫌㪾㪿㫇㫌㩿㪹㫇㫊㪀

㪊㪅㪊㪌㪜㪂㪇㪏
㪊㪅㪊㪇㪜㪂㪇㪏 0.1
㪊㪅㪉㪌㪜㪂㪇㪏
㪊㪅㪉㪇㪜㪂㪇㪏
0.05
㪊㪅㪈㪌㪜㪂㪇㪏
㪊㪅㪈㪇㪜㪂㪇㪏
㪊㪅㪇㪌㪜㪂㪇㪏 0
1.25E-03 6.25E-03 1.13E-02
㪉㪌㪇㪇㪇㪇 㪉㪌㪉㪇㪇㪇 㪉㪌㪋㪇㪇㪇 㪉㪌㪍㪇㪇㪇 㪉㪌㪏㪇㪇㪇 㪉㪍㪇㪇㪇㪇
Data Burst Generation Rate Lambda
㪪㪸㫄㫇㫃㫀㫅㪾㩷㪫㫀㫄㪼㩿㱘㫊㪀
Fig8 throughput during 25000Ǵ s and 26000Ǵ s Fig9 Characteristics Data burst contention rate

In the second simulation, we observe the dat a
burst contention rate characteristic. Fig 9 shows the
data burst contention rate of one VP as function of
data burst generation rate λ . The data burst
contention rate of con ventional scheme keeps higher
as λ gets higher. However the data burst
contention rates of both proposed schemes keep the
critical data burst contention rate, which is the upper
limit of the acceptable area. We observe that the data
burst contention rate of D-IAT is slight higher than
S-IAT.
In t he third simulation, we observe the throughput
characteristic. Fig 10 shows the throughput as
function of dat a burst generation rate λ of global
network. X-axis and Y-axis mean data burst
generation rate λ and throughput respecti vel y. Th e
throughput of S-IAT is increasing until λ reaches
to 0.00625. Thi s is because when λ is below
0.00625, the load is not the critical l oad. However
the throughput of S-IAT keep a constant value when
Finally, in the forth simulat ion, we observe the deliver y
delay character istic. Fig 11 shows the average delivery
delay o n o ne VP as function of the data burst generation
rate λ . The delivery delay of the conventional scheme
keeps a constant rate since it does not suffer flow control
at edge nodes. On the other hand, S-IAT suffers the
longest delay in these schemes because their inter-arrival
time is fixed. Due to fixed inter-arrival time, Fig.10
shows that S-IAT wastes the network resources. D-IAT
which supports a dynamic inter-arrival time can achieve
shorter delivery delay than S-IAT one. This is because
D-IAT edge nodes cha nge their inter-arrival times and
send data bursts according to the network congestion state.
D-IAT makes it possible to utilize network resources more
effectively than S-IAT.
0.1
S-IAT
0.08 D-IAT
Throughput(Gbps)

λ is over the critical l oad for keeping the data burst 0.06
contention rate in the acceptable area. On the other
hand, the throughput of D-IAT is increasing even 0.04
though λ exceeds the critical load. This is because
D-IAT edge nodes send the many more data bursts 0.02
than S-IAT so that the network resources are used
effectivel y when network is non-congestion state. 0
D-IAT achieve 35% higher throughput than S-IAT. 1.25E-03 6.25E-03 1.13E-02
Data Burst Generation Rate Lambda

Fig 10 Characteristics of Throughput

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㪋㪈㪋㪌
㪚㫆㫅㫍㪼㫅㫋㫀㫆㫅㪸㫃
㪋㪈㪋㪇 㪪㵥㪠㪘㪫
㪛㪼㫃㫀㫍㪼㫉㫐㩷㪛㪼㫃㪸㫐㩿 㱘㫊㪼㪺㪀
㪛㵥㪠㪘㪫
㪋㪈㪊㪌
㪋㪈㪊㪇
㪋㪈㪉㪌
㪋㪈㪉㪇
㪈㪅㪉㪌㪜㪄㪇㪊 㪍㪅㪉㪌㪜㪄㪇㪊
㪛㪸㫋㪸㩷㪙㫌㫉㫊㫋㩷㪞㪼㫅㪼㫉㪸㫋㫀㫆㫅㩷㪩㪸㫋㪼㩷㪣㪸㫄㪹㪻㪸
Fig 11 Trans mission Delay
5. Conclusion
In Opti cal Burst Switching (OBS), edge nodes
keep sending data bursts regardl ess of the network
condition which may overwhelm the network
capacities. It causes the serious burst contention
problem in OBS. In order to sol ve this problem, we
have proposed two novel schemes named S-IAT and
D-IAT based on the VP concept. They allow that
edge nodes send the optimum traffic flow for the
OBS network. S-IAT allows keeping the dat a burst
contention rate in the acceptable state. D-IAT allows
detecting congestion state with simple moving
average and virtual path. D-IAT has achieved not
only keeping the data burst contention rate in
acceptable area but obtaining 35% higher throughput
and lower delivery delay than S-IAT.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
"This research was partly supported by both the
Ministry of Knowledge and Economy, Republic of
Korea, under the ITRC support program supervised
by IITA(IITA-2009-C1090-0902-0004), and the
Ministry of Education, Science, Sports and Culture
Japan, Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (B), no.
19360180, 2009.
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