Patent ID: 7830789

Claim:
A method for establishing signal paths on a ring network, comprising: providing a demand set including one or more traffic demands each being defined as a traffic demand record indicating a requisite condition for establishing at least one signal path between a pair of terminal nodes on the ring network, the traffic demand record including a pair of terminal node identifiers and a link cost, the pair of terminal node identifiers identifying the pair of terminal nodes between which the at least one signal path is to be established and the link cost indicating a cost for transferring traffic between the pair of terminal nodes; associating each of the one or more traffic demands with a demand accommodating route on the ring network, the demand accommodating route connecting the pair of terminal nodes identified by the traffic demand record, in a given rotational direction along the ring network; performing a demand chain generation procedure of generating one or more demand chains each defined as a series of traffic demands so that a sequence of demand accommodating routes associated with the series of traffic demands are arranged along the ring network in the same order of the series of traffic demands, and adjacent two demand accommodating routes have contact with each other via one terminal node; selecting, from among the one or more demand chains, a first demand chain having a maximum number of traffic demands; and establishing said at least one signal path, based on traffic demand records defining the first demand chain, on each of the sequence of demand accommodating routes associated with the selected first demand chain.