Patent ID: 8041218

Claim:
A method comprising: establishing by control plane logic that one or more planning pre-conditions for planning a circuit have been satisfied, the circuit comprising a path between a source network node and a destination network node; in response to establishing that the one or more planning pre-conditions have been satisfied, initiating the design of the circuit; validating the design of the circuit; establishing that one or more reservation pre-conditions for reservation of a plurality of resources for the circuit have been satisfied, where at least one of the reservation pre-conditions comprises establishing that the circuit has been designed; in response to establishing that the one or more reservation pre-conditions have been satisfied, initiating the reservation of the resources for the circuit; establishing that one or more activation pre-conditions for activation of the circuit have been satisfied, where at least one of the activation pre-conditions comprises establishing that the resources for the circuit have been reserved; and in response to establishing that the one or more activation pre-conditions have been satisfied, initiating the activation of the circuit.