Patent ID: 8687959

Claim:
A method to determine configuration information associated with an optical network having a plurality of wavelength division multiplexed optical nodes coupled by optical fiber spans, the method comprising: each node autonomously originating and publishing an identification message to each of its neighbors through an optical supervisory channel comprising an out-of-band wavelength channel, each said identification message including a source node identifier identifying the originating node for the message, the identity of the originating nodes' neighbors and including node configuration data associated with the node including information about the configuration of the originating node and neighboring nodes of the originating node, the node configuration data comprises optical span loss associated with the optical fiber spans coupled to the node measured by an optical detector, wherein the node configuration data further comprises switch triggers, power management data, node protection scheme, wavelength plan, and node type; at each node, publishing neighbor identification messages to each of the plurality of nodes comprising the identity of the node, the identity of its neighbors, and the node configuration data associated with the node; and determining a network configuration for the portion of the network received by the node consistent with the published neighbor identification messages received by the node, wherein the network configuration is determined in accord with neighbor relationships from the published neighbor identification messages, and wherein the network configuration is checked to ensure the node configuration data from each node is within a design range for the network.