Patent ID: 7050667

Claim:
An optical switching node for a photonic network comprising: a photonic switch core having a plurality of inputs and a plurality of outputs and capable of connecting any input to any output; a first wavelength division demultiplexer coupled to a subset of the plurality of inputs for demultiplexing an optical signal having a first multiplex density having a first wavelength spacing into optical channels; a first wavelength division multiplexer coupled to a subset of the plurality of outputs for multiplexing any optical channels connected to it into an optical signal having a second multiplex density having a second wavelength spacing; a multi-wavelength source for generating DWDM quality wavelengths for supplying access multiplexers with unmodulated wavelengths upon which to multiplex data packets, the second multiplex density being higher than the first; and the photonic switch core being operable to consolidate wavelengths from access multiplexers into a dense wavelength division multiplexed (DWDM) signal for transmission in a core network.