Patent ID: 7099584

Claim:
A high-speed optical data transport network for communicating over a DWDM segment, comprising: a first transceiver coupled to the DWDM segment for communicating information over the DWDM segment, and a second transceiver coupled to the DWDM segment for communicating information over the DWDM segment with the first transceiver; wherein the first transceiver and second transceiver each include: (a) a plurality of line circuits each including an external communication interface for communicating with external systems using protocols having overhead and a DWDM communication interface using a optical transport network (OTN) protocol having optical transport network overhead; (b) a communication structure for enabling communication between the plurality of line circuits; (c) wherein each of the plurality of line circuits includes a line decoder to decode inbound information from the external communication interface including the overhead and a line encoder configured to encode outbound information to the external communication interface; and (d) wherein each of the plurality of line circuits includes an OTN decoder to decode inbound information from the DWDM interface including at least a portion of the overhead and an OTN encoder configured to encode outbound information to the DWDM interface while preserving at least a portion of the overhead; and (e) an adaptive forward error correction (FEC) circuit configured to characterize an error pattern received by the transceiver, wherein the FEC circuit determines a selected algorithm from a group of possible algorithms based on at least one error statistic.