Patent ID: 6842562

Claim:
An add/drop node for an optical network, comprising: a network drop splitter operable to be coupled to a network optical fiber and to stages of drop splitters, the network drop splitter operable to passively split an optical signal received from the network optical fiber into multiple copies of the signal, the stages of drop splitters operable to passively split at least one of the copies of the optical signal from the network drop splitter into additional copies of the signal; a plurality of filters, each of the filters operable to filter at least one copy of the signal from at least one drop splitter of the stages of drop splitters so as to pass a specific traffic channel to a coupled receiver; and a channel reuse module operable to be coupled to the network optical fiber and further operable to selectively terminate portions of the signal on the network optical fiber, wherein the channel reuse module comprises a demultiplexer, a multiplexer, and a plurality of optical switches operable to terminate selected wavelengths from the signal, the optical switches coupled between the demultiplexer and the multiplexer and operable to forward non-terminated channels to the multiplexer.