Patent ID: 7343101

Claim:
A method of reducing crosstalk between optical channels in an optical communication network, the method comprising receiving first data on a first channel, the first data having a framing structure including at last one repetitive sequence of framing bytes; receiving second data on a second channel, the second data having a framing structure including at least one repetitive sequence of framing bytes coincident with the framing structure on the first channel; determining the length of a longest identical framing bytes in the first data; altering a transmission characteristic of the first data on the first channel to reduce coincidence between the first data framing structure on the first channel and the second data framing structure on the second channel; and transmitting the first data on the first channel and the second data on the second channel; where said altering the transmission characteristic includes introducing a predetermined delay between the initiation of transmission by an optical multiplexer of the first data framing structure on the first channel and the initiation of transmission by the optical multiplexer of the second data framing structure on the second channel no shorter in duration than the time necessary to transmit the longest repetitive sequence of identical framing bytes in the first data.