Patent ID: 7181141

Claim:
A network element in an optical communications network, the network element comprising: a data collection application program interface (API) for receiving a request from a client for network topology information; a topology gatherer module in communication with said data collection API, wherein said topology gatherer module obtains channel connection trail data identifying network connections, channel end-to-end connection data, and client mapping data, for a channel on the optical communications network; a topology change module in communication with said data collection API, wherein said topology change module obtains topology change information based on a channel entry in a multispan database associated with the optical communications network; and a gateway node module in communication with said data collection API, wherein said gateway node module obtains a gateway node object identifying a network element where a channel originates or terminates on the optical communications network; wherein one of said topology gatherer module, topology change module and gateway node module provides the network topology information requested by the client to said data collection API, said data collection API providing the network topology information to the client.