Patent ID: 7283740

Claim:
An optical network, comprising: an optical ring subdivided into a plurality of subnets such that each subnet comprises a portion of the optical ring; the subnets each comprising a plurality of add/drop nodes coupled to the optical ring and operable to passively add and drop traffic to and from the optical ring; a plurality of gateway nodes, wherein the gateway node comprises a demultiplexer to demultiplex an ingress signal into sets of channels, each set of channels constituting one or more constituent channels, a switch element to selectively pass through or terminate the constituent channels, and a multiplexer to combine the pass through constituent channels into an egress signal; the gateway nodes each coupled to the optical ring at a different boundary between neighboring subnets so that there is a gateway node coupled at each boundary between neighboring subnets, each gateway node operable to selectively pass and terminate channels between subnets to allow wavelength reuse in the subnets and to provide protection switching.