Patent ID: 7469282

Claim:
A method for provisioning and maintaining a network circuit in a data network, comprising: providing an interface to a legacy logical element module; receiving a request to provision the network circuit, the network circuit comprising a logical circuit and a physical circuit, wherein the request includes information defining transmission characteristics of the logical circuit and physical circuit information for assigning physical equipment needed for installing the physical circuit; transmitting the request and instructions to provision the logical circuit over the interface to the legacy logical element module without manual intervention, wherein the instructions are utilized by the legacy logical element module to configure the logical circuit, wherein configuring the logical circuit comprises accessing and programming at least one network device port to send data describing a logical data path to at least one network device in communication with the legacy logical element module; and obtaining logical circuit data for the network circuit from a network management module comprises: sending a request to the network management module to obtain the logical circuit data; at the network management module, requesting the logical circuit data from the legacy logical element module; receiving the request at the legacy logical element module; based on the request, retrieving the logical circuit data from the at least one network device having access to the network circuit; at the legacy logical element module, sending the logical circuit data to the network management module; and receiving the logical circuit data from the network management module.