Patent ID: 7283739

Claim:
An optical network, comprising: an optical ring; at least three subnets, each subnet comprising a subdivided portion of the optical ring and comprising a plurality of add/drop nodes coupled to the optical ring; the add/drop nodes operable to: forward a first set of protectable traffic streams in a first set of channels in a first direction on the optical ring; forward a second set of protectable traffic streams in a second set of channels in a second direction on the optical ring; forward a first set of terminable traffic streams in the second set of channels in the first direction; and forward a second set of terminable traffic streams in the first set of channels in the second direction, wherein the protectable traffic streams are higher priority traffic streams than the terminable traffic streams; and a plurality of gateway nodes, 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 wavelengths between subnets to allow wavelength reuse in the subnets.