Patent ID: 9673898
Date: 2017-06-06
CPC Classifications: H04B,H04J,H04Q

Claim:
1. A method of validating a path in an optical layer of a communications network, for client traffic having a service level associated with that client traffic, the method comprising: setting an optical quality margin according to the service level associated with that client traffic, wherein the optical quality margin is a target value indicative of a level of closeness between an estimated optical quality of the path and a level which produces a threshold error rate in transmitted client traffic; and checking whether the estimated optical quality is within the optical quality margin set according to the client traffic service level, wherein the network has a packet layer, and the method has the preliminary step of passing an indication of the service level associated with the client traffic from a client layer control entity to a control entity of the optical layer, for use in setting the optical quality margin.