Patent ID: 8798431

Claim:
An optical patch unit adapted for mounting in or on an optical equipment rack, the optical patch unit comprising: multiple front-side optical connector receptacles arranged on a front side of the optical patch unit; multiple back-side optical connector receptacles arranged on a back side of the optical patch unit, wherein each front-side optical connector receptacle corresponds to a single one of the back-side optical connector receptacles; and multiple optical interconnections, including an optical interconnection between each front-side optical connector receptacle and its corresponding back-side optical connector receptacle wherein the optical patch unit is an active optical patch unit comprising one or more active optical shuffle selector cards, each active optical shuffle selector card comprising: two or more of the front-side optical connector receptacles; a set of alternate front-side optical connector receptacles, each alternate front-side optical connector receptacle corresponding to a single one of the front-side optical connector receptacles; and an optical crossbar array providing a selectable optical interconnection from each back-side optical connector receptacle to the corresponding front-side optical connector receptacle and the corresponding alternate front-side optical connector receptacle.