Patent ID: 7289531

Claim:
A network-system comprising: at least one first IP-network which comprises a plurality of first nodes, at least two of the plurality of first nodes being first edge-nodes; a second IP-network comprising a plurality of second nodes; a transport-network comprising channel-switches for switching channels; and a management-system for managing networks in an overlay environment where a network topology of the transport network is not known to the management system, the management-system comprising: a converter which optimizes a network path in an IP-domain according to a first algorithm and converts IP-traffic-signals into transport-traffic-signals; and an optimiser which optimizes the topology that overlays the transport network and a use of channels in said transport-network according to at least one second algorithm based on a plurality of constraints and objectives, in response to converting by the converter, wherein the IP-domain comprises the first and second IP-networks and a single entity representing the transport-network.