Patent ID: 9607412
Date: 2017-03-28
CPC Classifications: G06T,H04B

Claim:
1. A method of configuring an optical network, the method comprising: designing a set of two or more different candidate configurations of network resources in at least a portion of the network; for each candidate configuration, a first network node computing a plurality of validated paths extending between respective pairs of wavelength termination points and having requisite physical resources to carry optical signal traffic between its pair of wavelength termination points, and generating a respective graph of the candidate configuration, wherein an edge of the graph corresponds with a respective validated path and has a direction attribute indicating a direction of traffic flow and a vertex of the graph corresponds with at least one wavelength termination point, wherein the requisite physical resources include at least bandwidth, wavelength channel availability and signal reach; a second network node analyzing each graph to identify a best one of the candidate configurations based on one or more criteria comprising at least reciprocal symmetry where respective traffic flows in opposite directions must follow the same path through the optical network; and the second network node provisioning resources of the optical network in accordance with the identified best candidate configuration.