Optical burst switching (OBS) is emerging as an optical networking technology combining best of the features of optical circuit-switching technology and optical packet-switching technology. This paper discusses architecture and hardware implementation of a network interface card (NIC) for an OBS network. The NIC implements a specific low-latency signaling protocol just-in-time (JlT) for OBS networks. This NIC can handle data streams up to 1 Gbps. Average OBS JIT signaling message processing time with this NIC is on the order of 1 microsecond. This is the first JIT OBS NIC implementation known to the authors. Complementary efforts are on-going to develop other elements for the OBS network.

Current generation of FPGAs with integrated high-speed transceivers provide a useful tool for prototyping various networking applications. We discuss a case study in developing a high-speed network interface card (NIC) for communication networks. The NIC implements a low-latency signaling protocol called Just-in-Time (JIT) for Optical Burst Switched networks. The main processing engine inside the FPGA runs at 62.5MHz and can handle data streams up to 1Gbps. The NIC utilizes the FPGA's gigabit transceiver cores, standard PCS/PMA and MAC layers and uses an optical front-end card to transmit data optically on specific wavelengths. The JIT engine in the NIC processes three kinds of messages - messages from the host, the network and internal timing messages associated with various timer events. The engine implements layer 3 functions typically implemented in software - like generating signaling messages and maintaining all active connections. This allows very fast setup and teardown of connections than otherwise possible.