Quantized congestion notification (QCN), discussed in IEEE 802.1Qau, is one of the most promising Layer 2 congestion control methods for data center networks. Because data center networks have fundamentally symmetric structures and links are designed to have high link utilization, data center flows often pass through multiple bottleneck links. QCN reduces its transmission rate in a probabilistic manner with each congestion notification feedback reception, which might cause excessive regulation of the transmission rate in a multiple-bottleneck case because each bottleneck causes congestion feedbacks. We have already proposed QCN with bottleneck selection (QCN/BS) for multicast communications in data center networks. Although QCN/BS was originally proposed for multicast communications, it can also be applied to unicast communications with multiple bottleneck points. QCN/BS calculates the congestion level for each switch based on feedback from the switch and adjusts its transmission rate to the worst congestion level. In this paper, we preliminarily evaluate QCN/BS in unicast communications with multiple tandem bottleneck points. Our preliminary evaluation reveals that QCN/BS can resolve the excessive rate regulation problem of QCN but has new fairness problems for long-hop flows. To resolve this, we propose a new algorithm that integrates QCN/BS and our already proposed Adaptive BC_LIMIT. In Adaptive BC_LIMIT, the opportunities for rate increase are almost the same for all flows even if their transmission rates differ, enabling an accelerated convergence of fair rate allocation among flows sharing a bottleneck link. The integrated algorithm is the first congestion control mechanism that takes into account unicast flows passing through multiple tandem bottleneck points based on QCN. Furthermore, it does not require any modifications of switches used in QCN. Our simulation results show that our proposed integration of QCN/BS and Adaptive BC_LIMIT significantly mitigates the fairness problem for unicast communications with multiple bottleneck points in data center networks.

In recent years, software-defined networking (SDN), which performs centralized network management with software, has attracted much attention. Although packets are transmitted based on flow entries in SDN switches, the number of flow entries that the SDN switches can handle is limited. To overcome this difficulty, this paper proposes a flow-based routing method that performs flexible routing control with a small number of flow entries. The proposed method provides mixed integer programming. It assigns common paths to flows that can be aggregated at intermediate switches, while considering the utilization of network links. Because it is difficult for mixed integer programming to compute large-scale problems, the proposed method also provides a heuristic algorithm for them. Through numerical experiments, this paper shows that the proposed method efficiently reduces both the number of flow entries and the loads of congested links.

In all-optical switches using the cascade of second harmonic generation and difference frequency mixing in periodically poled lithium niobate (PPLN) waveguide devices, walk-off between the fundamental and second harmonic pulses causes crosstalk between neighboring symbols, and limits the switching performance. In this paper, we numerically study retiming characteristics of all-optical switches that employ the PPLN waveguide devices with consideration for the effects of the crosstalk and for the input timing of the data and clock pulses. We find that the time offset between the data and clock pulses can control the timing jitter of the switched output; an appropriate offset can reduce the jitter while improving the switching efficiency.

This paper proposes a traveling maintenance method based on the resource pool concept, as a new network maintenance model. For failure recovery, the proposed method utilizes permissible time that is ensured by shared resource pools. In the proposed method, even if a failure occurs in a communication facility, maintenance staff wait for occurrence of successive failures in other communication facilities during the permissible time instead of immediately tackling the failure. Then, the maintenance staff successively visit the communication facilities that have faulty devices and collectively repair them. Therefore, the proposed method can reduce the amount of time that the maintenance staff take for fault recovery. Furthermore, this paper provides a system design that optimizes the proposed traveling maintenance according to system requirements determined by the design philosophy of telecommunication networks. Through simulation experiments, we show the effectiveness of the proposed method.

This paper proposes a contention-free burst scheduling scheme for optically burst-switched WDM networks. We construct contention-free wavelength planes (λ-planes) by assigning dedicated wavelengths to each ingress node. Bursts are transmitted to their egress nodes on λ-planes, along routes forming a spanning tree. As a result, contention at intermediate core nodes is completely eliminated, and contention at ingress nodes is resolved by means of electric buffers. This paper develops a spanning tree construction algorithm, aiming at balancing input loads among output ports at each ingress node. Furthermore, a wavelength assignment algorithm is proposed, which is based on the amount of traffic lost at ingress nodes. We show that the proposed scheme can decrease the burst loss probability drastically, even if traffic intensities at ingress nodes are different.