Patent ID: 8086101

Claim:
A method for routing optical traffic, the method comprising: distributing with a configurable wavelength link architecture spectral bands received on a first plurality of input optical signals among a first plurality of output optical signals, wherein the configurable wavelength link architecture comprises a first plurality of wavelength routing elements, each such wavelength routing element adapted for receiving an input optical signal comprising a plurality of subsets of spectral bands, selectively routing the subsets of spectral bands between a first optical signal and different ones of a plurality of second optical signals according to a configurable state of such wavelength routing element, wherein a mapping of the spectral bands comprised by the first plurality of input optical signals to the first plurality of output optical signals is determined by the states of the first plurality of wavelength routing elements; and upgrading a capacity of the configurable wavelength link architecture to distribute spectral bands received from a second plurality of input optical signals among a second plurality of output optical signals, wherein: each such input optical signal is received from one of a plurality of separated optical transmission systems and a corresponding output optical signal is directed to such one of the plurality of separated optical transmission systems; the second plurality of input optical signals includes the first plurality of input optical signals; and the second plurality of output optical signals includes the first plurality of output optical signals.