Scaling Internet Routers using Optics

Reading the other paper puts this paper into perspective. This paper further motivates the same subject of switch and router designs and suggests that a cross bar is not enough for the router, but we should use optical networks to scale and reduce power. This paper goes into a good amount of detail about the design and also multi racks for routers. It also lists the different challenges and possible solutions that will be faced when actually implementing this architecture of using optics.

As mentioned in the previous blog, i don't have a lot of background on this subject of matter, thus it was a hard paper for me to read. But this paper does seem to go in a fair amount of detail in the design. One thing that i started thinking about is ways to characterize the router's delay. Since our research project involves an estimation of network delay, it seems that as routers are scaling faster and faster, and as the structure gets more and more complicated, an estimation of the delay will become harder and harder.

It's also interesting that as other electronics are getting smaller and smaller, it seems that the router is growing bigger and bigger. This paper suggests that we would need multiple racks because of the power consumption and heat dissipation , instead of a single rack.