In this paper we present an analytical model, which considers the effects of the switching time on the network performance in service differentiated optical packet/burst switching (OPS/OBS) networks. Our results indicate that the switching time must be less than 10% of the packet/burst duration in order to avoid any significant reductions in the network performance. Furthermore, regarding a network with full wavelength conversion, we show that the benefits of statistical resource sharing are almost non-existent for low priority traffic when the switching time is large.