Patent ID: 7840692

Claim:
An apparatus to provide bandwidth management services to a user in an optical communication system, the apparatus comprising: a network device with an optical service agent including: an application programming interface stored on a non-transitory computer readable storage medium and executed to perform steps including receiving input from a user application indicative of application-specific bandwidth management service requirements; a user-to-network interface (UNI) stored on non-transitory computer readable storage medium and executed to perform steps including interfacing with an optical communication network in which data is processed and transported only in optical form; a peer-to-peer interface stored on a non-transitory computer readable storage medium and executed to perform steps including interfacing with peer users; and optical service logic stored on a non-transitory computer readable storage medium and executed to perform steps including interacting with the application programming interface and the optical communication network via the UNI and with the peer users via the peer-to-peer interface for providing said application-specific bandwidth management services for the user, including provision of a new optical communication path between specified nodes in the optical communication network, the optical service logic comprising bandwidth relinquishing logic for relinquishing excess bandwidth for a connection, the bandwidth relinquishing logic relinquishing excess bandwidth for the connection upon determining that bandwidth utilization on the connection is below a predetermined level; and an optical service server which authenticates the user, obtains network topological information, and employs the network topological information on behalf of the optical service agent for providing bandwidth management services such that the network topological information is not exposed to the user.