Patent ID: 8078701

Claim:
A network design apparatus for designing an arrangement of optical transmission devices in stations in a linear section of a network, comprising: a computer processor comprising: an acquiring unit that acquires information concerning a type of optical transmission device applicable in the stations, respectively, and information concerning cost and transmission degradation associated with arrangement of the optical transmission devices; a designing unit that, based on the information acquired by the acquiring unit, designs an arrangement of the optical transmission devices wherein the cost is lowest, the cost being lowest among arrangements wherein between stations in which optical transmission devices applicable as optical regenerative repeaters are provided, the transmission degradation is less than or equal to a threshold; and an outputting unit that outputs information concerning the arrangement designed by the designing unit, the designing unit comprising: a graph generating unit that generates graphical information, nodes that correspond to the optical transmission devices applicable in the stations, respectively, and links that connect the nodes and to which the transmission degradation and the cost are correlated, respectively, and a searching unit that searches the graphical information for a path corresponding to the arrangement for which the transmission degradation is less than or equal to the threshold and the cost is the least, and the graph generating unit comprises: a node generating unit that generates one or more nodes for each of the stations, the nodes corresponding to the optical transmission devices applicable in the stations, respectively, at least two of the generated nodes corresponding to a same one of the stations, a link generating unit that generates one or more input links to each of the nodes, wherein an input link to a given node among the nodes is from a node of a station upstream from a station of the given node, and a computing unit that computes the transmission degradation and the cost for each of the input links generated by the link generating unit.