Objective: Optical burst switching (OBS) network is a promising solution for realizing future all-optical internet. However

common links failure detection mechanisms are hardly used for OBS networks due to the special one-way resource reservation mechanism in OBS. Hence

it is necessary for us to design the suitable links failure detection solution which meets the need of OBS data transmission. Method: The bidirectional forwarding detection (BFD) protocol is adopted in the OBS detection mechanism. Moreover

BFD can adjust both the transmitting period and detection time according to the practical requirements of OBS networks in order to meet the demand of fast failure detection. In the simulation part

the NSFNET is chosen as the simulation network and both OBS traffic generator and node failure generator are realized. Moreover

the performances of links failure detection for BFD are simulated under the single path scenario and network scenario. Result: Simulation results show that the average packets drop rate is lower than 0.001 under the single path scenario. While under the network scenario

the average packets drop rate is nearly 0.1 owing to the restrictions of OBS networks such as resource contention and fixed offset times. Conclusion: As a whole

BFD is a fast links failure detection protocol which is fit for OBS networks.