Patent ID: 7130263

Claim:
An apparatus comprising: a plurality of network elements; a plurality of spans interconnecting said plurality of network elements to form a ring, each of said plurality of spans having two sub-spans on which traffic travels in opposite directions; a multiplexing ring transport network protocol operating on said ring providing a plurality of channels on each of said sub-spans, each of said plurality of channels includes a set of working channels and a mutually exclusive set of protecting channels, wherein a first connection configuration programmed on a first set of channels is not the same as a second connection configuration programmed on a second set of channels because the first and second connection configurations identify one or more different concatenations of two or more components of said first and second sets of channels, where each of the concatenations of components carries data for a single circuit with a bandwidth greater than that of data carried by a single component, wherein said first set of channels and said second set of channels are respectively the set of working channels and the set of protecting channels, on a same one of said sub-sans, wherein the same connection configuration must be programmed on each of said sets of working channels on which traffic travels in the same direction as said first set of channels, and wherein a third connection configuration is programmed on each of said sets of working channels on which traffic travels in the opposite direction as first set of channels, and wherein said first and third connection configurations differ.