Scalable Fractional Lambda Switching: A Testbed

This paper presents experiments on a testbed based on ultra-scalable switches realized using off-the-shelf optical and electronic components. The scalability of this switching architecture, a direct outcome of the deployment of pipeline forwarding, results—in addition to much lower cost—in the need for a smaller amount of components, and, consequently, lower power dissipation, which is key to a “greening” of the Internet. Although an all-optical architecture is demonstrated, we reached the conclusion that, given the current state of the art, a hybrid electro-optical architecture is the “best-of-breed” switch solution.