Affiliations: Department of Electrical Engineering, DUR 202, MC 4055, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305-4055, USA, Tel.: (415) 725-5890, Fax: (415) 723-9251, E-mail: cbarry@cher.stanford.edu
Note: [] This work was in part supported by BMDO under grant DASG60-93-C-0054. Mr Noronha was supported by FAPESP from September/89 to Augustl93 under grant 89/1658.
Abstract: We report on the design of a distributed, small, fast packet switched network interface that provides electronic buffering and switching for the data channel in reconfigurable multi-Gbps WDM optical networks. The high-speed interface has been constructed and tested in one such WDM network, STARNET, which is based on a physical passive star topology and is intended for backbone applications in Campus Networks. A two-node experimental STARNET is being implemented at the Optical Communications Research Laboratory at Stanford University. The interface prototype was completed in September 1993; the printed circuit board version of the interface has been operational without modification since January 1994. We have since developed software from the driver level to the applications layer.
