Patent ID: 8781320

Claim:
An automatically switched optical network, comprising: a number of areas on a transport plane, and a control plane, wherein, at least one portion of an area is isolated from the other portions of the area, where the area is referred to as a partitioned area and each portion of the partitioned area is referred to as a partition of the area; and the control plane is configured to realize a cross-area route between the isolated partitions of the area by a virtual link; wherein the control plane realizes a cross-area route between the isolated partitions of the area by the virtual link means: when the control plane detects that an area has become a partitioned area due to a link failure, the control plane configures a virtual link at an boundary of each partition of the area respectively, sets up a soft permanent connection (SPC) service connection between a node in any one partition of the area and another node in any other partition of the area, and obtains a route between the nodes in the two partitions of the area through the virtual link.