<title>Supercomputer Supernet (SSN): a high-speed electro-optic campus and metropolitan network</title>

The Supercomputer Supernet (SSN) is a high-performance, scalable optical interconnection network for supercomputers and workstation cluster based on asynchronous, wormhole- routing switches. The WDM optical backbone extends the geographic coverage range from interdepartmental to campus and even to metropolitan areas with dynamically reconfigurable direct or multi-hop connections. The network provides very high-speed integrated services, supporting connection oriented, guaranteed bandwidth traffic as well as datagram traffic. The first networking level of the two-level SSN architecture is electronic and consists of crossbar meshes locally interconnecting work-stations, supercomputers, peripheral devices and mass memory. At a higher networking level, an optical backbone network supporting multiple wavelength division multiplexed (WDM) channels allows communication between devices connected to distinct crossbar meshes. In this paper, we focus on the protocols of the WDM optical backbone network and address the issue of integration of the electronic wormhole- routing LAN with the optical backbone.