Optical cross-connect system comparisons are carried out in this paper with an emphasis on the transmission performance of different node architectures. We employ a photonic simulator to bypass the considerable cost and time constraints that would arise if a similar task was carried out in a laboratory. The computation times are minimized by using an optical circulating loop to create a simplified simulation configuration of an optical network. Based on the simulation results, the estimated upper limit on the number of cascadable 2×2 nodes is obtained for different node architectures and performance targets. Almost twice as many nodes can be traversed by a signal in systems with nodes that employ novel switching technologies characterized by high crosstalk isolation (higher than 55 dB) and/or low insertion losses compared to earlier proposed monolithically integrated node designs.