Abstract
Among the promising solutions for next generation Internet backbone, one can consider the optical packet and burst switching technologies. These technologies do not provide, however, suitable contention resolution and QoS support. We propose in this paper a novel node architecture allowing better QoS provision for packet and burst switching and allowing a prioritized buffering technique for contention resolution. We also develop a theoretical model for evaluating its performance based on a new conservation law and a queuing network model to help an efficient mathematical analysis. Finally, a simulation activity is performed to validate the proposed schemes.