Burst assembly mechanism is one of the fundamental factors that determine the performance of an optical burst switching (OBS) network. In this paper, we investigate the influence of the number of burstifiers on TCP performance for an OBS network. The goodput of TCP flows between an ingress node and an egress node traveling through an optical network is studied as the number of assembly buffers per destination varies. First, the burst-length independent losses resulting from the contention in the core OBS network using a non-void-filling burst scheduling algorithm, e.g., Horizon, are studied. Then, burst-length dependent losses arising as a result of void-filling scheduling algorithms, e.g., LAUC-VF, are studied for two different TCP flow models: FTP-type long-lived flows and variable size short-lived flows. Simulation results show that for both types of scheduling algorithms, both types of TCP flow models, and different TCP versions (Reno, Newreno and Sack), TCP goodput increases as the number of burst assemblers per egress node is increased for an OBS network employing timer-based assembly algorithm. The improvement from one burstifier to moderate number of burst assemblers is significant (15-50% depending on the burst loss probability, per-hop processing delay, and the TCP version), but the goodput difference between moderate number of buffers and per-flow aggregation is relatively small, implying that an OBS edge switch should use moderate number of assembly buffers per destination for enhanced TCP performance without substantially increasing the hardware complexity. © 2008 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC.