A novel all-optical packet switching node architecture is proposed

which is equipped with a set of fiber delay lines (FDLs) and tunable optical wavelength converters (TOWCs) shared among the input lines.As far as contention resolution is concerned

the developed architecture is more flexible and cost effective than the traditional design and the methods introduced in the literatures.To obtain an equivalent packet loss probability to the method that provides TOWCs for each input wavelength channel

we give the maximum number of converters required by the system.Simulation results show that the developed architecture can guarantee a good tradeoff in terms of system size

cost and performance.We also get the conclusion that with the increase of the product of the number of input/output fibers and the number of wavelengths

the number of TOWCs and FDLs needed will

being different from the traditional design

gradually decrease.