Optical multicast system for data center networks.

Area of Science:

• Computer Science
• Electrical Engineering
• Network Engineering

Background:

• Data center networks face challenges in efficient multicast traffic delivery.
• Existing electronic packet switching (EPS) and peer-to-peer multicast methods have limitations in speed, complexity, and energy consumption.

Purpose of the Study:

• To design and evaluate an Optical Multicast System for Data Center Networks.
• To leverage passive optical splitters and a hybrid network architecture for improved multicast performance.

Main Methods:

• Developed a hardware-software system integrating passive optical splitters within a hybrid Electronic Packet Switching (EPS) and Optical Circuit Switching (OCS) network.
• Implemented an application-driven control plane with a resource allocation algorithm for optimal splitter assignment.
• Built a prototype and simulation environment for performance evaluation.

Main Results:

• The system enables simultaneous delivery of multicast flows to all receivers with steady throughput.
• Optical multicast demonstrated reduced protocol complexity and lower energy consumption compared to IP multicast.
• Achieved at least an order of magnitude higher throughput and significantly less connection overhead than peer-to-peer methods for flows under 250 MB.
• Reduced total delivery energy consumption by 50% and improved latency by 55% for large data transfers with multicast flows.

Conclusions:

• The Optical Multicast System offers a faster, simpler, and more energy-efficient solution for data center multicast traffic.
• The hybrid EPS/OCS architecture with passive optical splitters is effective for bulk multicasting.
• This approach significantly outperforms traditional electronic multicast methods in throughput, energy efficiency, and latency.