Patent ID: 7133410

Claim:
A method for designing a bi-connected ring-based network comprising: receiving a list of locations where network traffic is at least one of originated and delivered; receiving a list of pairs of directly connected locations, each defining a corresponding network traffic carrying connection including one or more signal carrying connections between each of the directly connected locations, and a capacity for each of the network traffic carrying connections; receiving a list of traffic demand between each of the listed pairs of locations; determining a dual homed cover including one or more dual homed cycles, each cycle comprising a closed loop sequence of directly connected locations and corresponding network traffic carrying connections, wherein each location, which is capable of being bi-connected, is included in at least one of the one or more dual homed cycles; routing the traffic demand over the one or more cycles via the one or more of the network traffic carrying connections; at least one of outputting a report and storing a representation containing the designed bi-connected ring-based network; finding a list of candidate cycles; selecting one or more of the candidate cycles from the list wherein selecting one or more cycles comprises: rating each cycle; selecting the best rated cycle; determining if the selected cycles cover all the locations capable of being bi-connected; if the selected cycles do not cover all of the locations capable of being bi-connected, selecting an additional cycle, which is bi-connected with at least one of the previously selected cycles, and which in combination with the previously selected cycles has the best rating, and repeating the selection process for additional cycles until all locations capable of being bi-connected are covered.