Patent ID: 7590353

Claim:
A method for allocating the use of an optical light-trail, the light-trail enabling a plurality of nodes included in the light-trail to share the use of an optical wavelength to transmit traffic between the nodes included in the light-trail, the method comprising: calculating a bid at each of one or more nodes included in the light-trail, each of the nodes calculating a bid with consideration for the criticality of the node's need to transmit particular traffic on the light-trail, wherein each node determines whether to submit the calculated bid based on a calculated benefit of the light-trail to the node compared to a calculated benefit of other light-trails over which the node may transmit particular traffic, wherein the benefit of a light-trail to the node is calculated based on the criticality of a node's need to transmit traffic on the light-trail and the previous maximum bid for the light-trail from the nodes in the light-trail; transmitting the calculated bids from one or more of the nodes to an arbiter node; determine the maximum bid received at the arbiter node; determine whether to allocate use of the light-trail to the node associated with the maximum bid; and communicating one or more control messages from the arbiter node to the nodes that transmitted the bids indicating to which node use of the wavelength of the light-trail is allocated.