Patent ID: 7738359

Claim:
A method for managing alternate site switching in an optical communication system having a protected end-system in communication with a primary end-system over an optical communication network, the method comprising: designating at least one backup end-system to back up the primary end-system; constructing a failover tree through the optical communication system to the at least one backup end-system prior to a detection of a degradation or failure affecting the primary end-system; forwarding communications from the protected end-system to the primary end-system; detecting a degradation or failure affecting the primary end-system; and upon detection of the degradation or failure affecting the primary end-system, switching traffic from being forwarded by the protected end-system to the primary end-system to being forwarded by the protected end-system to one of said at least one backup end-system using the failover tree, wherein constructing a failover tree to the at least one backup end-system comprises: determining a root node for the failover tree; and constructing the failover tree rooted at the root node, and wherein constructing the failover tree rooted at the root node comprises: sending a setup request message specifying a failover tree structure to various nodes in the optical communication network; reserving appropriate lightpath resources by nodes associated with a lightpath to the primary end-system; and recording the failover tree structure by nodes associated with the failover tree.