Abstract: The paper proposes a novel rate-based congestion control scheme in optical burst switching (OBS) networks. Edge nodes monitor congestion situations by periodically sending and receiving resource management packets (RMP／RMP-ACK), which take the congestion information on core nodes in the OBS network along the light path, and adjust the sending rate of data bursts to avoid network congestion. The performance of the proposed scheme is studied by theoretical analysis and computer simulation. Results show that the RMP scheme can effectively control the OBS network congestion.

Key words: optical burst switching, congestion control, feedback scheme, traffic control