Patent ID: 6999681

Claim:
A method for seamless migration from static to agile optical networking at a network switching node in an optical transport network, the network switching node having an input and an output, comprising: providing an optical signal splitter at the input of the network switching node, the signal splitter adapted to receive an optical multiplexed signal having a plurality of data signals and at least one data signal being agile; providing an optical signal combiner at the output of the network switching node; splitting the optical multiplexed signal into a first and a second partitioned multiplexed signal; routing the first partitioned multiplexed signal to an optical add/drop multiplexer, the multiplexer operable to selectively add and selectively drop at least one of the optical data signals embodied in the first partitioned multiplexed signal routing the second partitioned multiplexed signal to a photonic cross-connect switch, the photonic cross-connect switch operable to switch the agile data signals; providing an optical signal combiner at the output of the network switching node, the optical signal combiner adapted to receive the first partitioned multiplexed signal from the optical add/drop multiplexer and the second partitioned multiplexed signal from the photonic cross-connect switch and operable to combine the first and second partitioned multiplexed signal.