Data Center Network Topologies Using Optical Packet Switches

The large data center network constructed of only the electronic packet switches consumes large power to provide enough bandwidth for all server pairs. One approach to construct the data center network that provides enough bandwidth with small energy consumption is to use the optical packet switches. In the data center network using the optical packet switches, however, the failures of the optical packet switches may have large impacts on the communication between servers. In this paper, we propose the data center network topology using the optical packet switches that can provide enough bandwidth even when some optical packet switches fail. We evaluate our topology and clarify that our topology can provide enough bandwidth even when some optical packet switches fail.

I. Introduction

In recent years, large data centers with tens of thousands of servers have been built to handle very large amounts of data generated by various online applications. In a data center, servers handle such very large amounts of data by communicating with each other via the network within the data center. Thus, the network within the data center has large impacts on the performance of the data center.