Patent ID: 9520961
Filing Date: 2016-12-13
CPC Classification: H04J,H04Q

Claim Text:
1. A method in an optical steering domain for steering one or more traffic flows through a plurality of processing nodes, wherein each of the one or more flows of traffic is to be processed by a different defined series of one or more processing nodes of the plurality of processing nodes, and wherein the optical steering domain comprises a set of three or more wavelength selective switches (WSSs), the method comprising: receiving traffic of a traffic flow of the one or more traffic flows at a common port of a first WSS of the set of WSSs, wherein the first WSS includes a plurality of tributary ports coupled to a respective plurality of optical links leading toward the plurality of processing nodes; transmitting, using a first tributary port of the WSS over a first optical link of the plurality of optical links, the traffic toward a first processing node of the plurality of processing nodes; receiving, at a tributary port of a second WSS of the set of WSSs, processed traffic, wherein the processed traffic is the result of the traffic being processed by the first processing node; transmitting, at a common port of the second WSS, the processed traffic to a third WSS of the set of WSSs; receiving, at a common port of the third WSS, the processed traffic; and transmitting, one or more times, the processed traffic out of one or more tributary ports of the third WSS on one or more optical links coupled to the one or more tributary ports of the third WSS on one end and coupled to one or more of the plurality of optical links that are coupled to the first WSS, to be looped back for further processing by one or more other processing nodes of the plurality of processing nodes.