Patent ID: 7308198

Claim:
A method for allocating protection bandwidth in a telecommunications mesh network, comprising: receiving a demand to provide a protection path from a source node to a destination node in the telecommunications mesh network, the demand having a pre-determined working path with a sequence of edges interconnecting the source node to the destination node; identifying a pre-cross-connectable protection path that maximizes bandwidth sharing from the source node to the destination node, wherein the pre-cross-connectable protection path does not include any multiple edge branch point conditions within the telecommunications mesh network, wherein the pre-cross-connectable protection path is identified by: subdividing one or more pre-cross-connected trails of the telecommunications mesh network into one or more subtrails; discarding any subtrail that does not meet any of one or more pre-determined conditions; creating a logical graph representation of the telecommunications mesh network from subtrails that have not been discarded.