Burst switching system using optical cross-connect as switch fabric

A switching system, comprising:

• one or more line card for input processing, forwarding, queuing, and scheduling data, the line card having a tunable laser to select a wavelength according to the packets' destination for a given burst of packets, so that the burst is switched to a desired destination and sent all-optically to a connected interface, wherein each line card includes an input processing module and no output processing module, and wherein each line card performs modification to a destination MAC address in the input processing module;
• an all-optical switch fabric coupled to the line card to perform wavelength switching;
• and
• a centralized arbitrator to resolve contention from different input ports, wherein the arbitrator resolves contention for requests to an output port, and sends back granted output port and time slot to each input port and upon receiving a grant for an assigned time slot, tunes an optical transmitter laser to a predetermined wavelength, and reads out packets from a corresponding queue to drive the optical transmitter, wherein the line cards, switch fabric, and centralized arbitrator operate as a router and are physically located in one chassis or rack with predetermined interconnect delay;
• and
• a fabric port connected to the line card having an input wavelength for each line card generated bursts, and an output wavelength for bursts switched to the line card, wherein in the line card, the input and output wavelengths of each fiber are separated and the output is coupled to the fiber at the network interface.