Method of Determining Delay in an Adaptive Path Optical Network

1 . A method of determining delay in an end-to-end path of an adaptive path optical network, the method comprising deriving average IP packet delay from the product of average link utilisation of IP packets in the network being sent in bursts and delay in two way reservation optical burst switching networks, wherein the average link utilisation in the network being sent in bursts is the ratio of average throughput sent in bursts in bits per second, to capacity at a bottleneck link in the end-to-end path in the network.

2 . A method according to claim 1 , wherein the average throughput sent in bursts comprises the product of the burst arrival rate in the bottleneck link and the average burst size.

3 . A method according to claim 1 , wherein the average link utilisation in the bottleneck link of the end-to-end path in the network being sent in bursts is the ratio of the sum from 1 to N of the product of the average throughput to the edge node i and the probability that the burst is sent through the network Without being blocked minus the sum from 1 to N of the product of the average throughput to the edge node i and the probability that an IP packet or burst which is being sent through the bottleneck link comes from the edge node i; to the capacity minus the sum from 1 to N of the product of the average throughput to the edge node i and the probability that an IP packet or burst which is being sent through the bottleneck link comes from the edge node i.