Patent ID: 7564778

Claim:
A method of detecting a failure in a network, which includes a transport plane comprised of a plurality of transport nodes performing optical cross-connect and a control plane comprised of a plurality of control nodes that are connected to and control the respective transport nodes, said method comprising the steps of: transmitting, from a control node connected to a transport node having detected a failure to an adjacent control node, a failure information message having a time indication indicative of a time at which the failure is detected; receiving, at a given control node, failure information messages transmitted from other control nodes; comparing, at the given control node, time indications of the failure information messages transmitted from the other control nodes to find a time indication indicative of an earliest time; and identifying, at the given control node, a location of the failure based on a location of the control node that has originally transmitted the failure information message having the time indication indicative of the earliest time.