Optical burst switching is an optical networking

Optical networking

Optical networking can refer to:* Optical communication* Fiber-optic communication* Synchronous optical networking* Optical Transport Network * Passive optical network...

 technique that allows dynamic sub-wavelength switching of data. OBS is viewed as a compromise between the yet unfeasible full optical packet switching (OPS) and the mostly static optical circuit switching (OCS). It differs from these paradigms because OBS control information is sent separately in a reserved optical channel and in advance of the data payload.