Patent ID: 7760738

Claim:
A system comprising: a processing system; a memory system coupled to the processing system; a network interface coupled to the processing system and connectable to a network, the network including a plurality of virtual local area network pools; and an optical control system communicatively coupled to the network and the processing system via the network interface, wherein the memory system stores instructions configured to cause the processing system, when retrieved from the memory system and executed by the processing system to: receive a service request over the network interface requesting a connection between a source node and a destination node over the network, determine a requested class of service associated with the service request, the class of service requirement indicating one of a plurality of classes of service, store topology information about the network, a portion of the topology information being based on a protocol identifying multiple paths in the network, each virtual local area network pool configured to include topology information relative to a set of paths configured to provision connections satisfying at least one class of service requirement, determine a shortest path between the source node and the destination node of the multiple paths based on the topology information provided in the plurality of virtual local area network pools, determine if the shortest path satisfies the requested class of service based on the topology information provided in the plurality of virtual local area network pools, send a request to the optical control system to add wavelength to at least a portion of one of the multiple paths when the one of the multiple paths does not satisfy a bandwidth requirement, and assign the shortest path to said connection.