Patent ID: 8861955

Claim:
An optical communications network node comprising: an optical transmitter module comprising a plurality of optical sources each having a different substantially fixed operating wavelength, each optical source being selectively assignable as an optical circuit switching channel source or an optical burst switching channel source; an optical receiver module comprising a plurality of optical detectors each operable at one of said different substantially fixed operating wavelengths; an electrical cross-point switch coupled between said optical receiver module and said optical transmitter module and comprising a plurality of switch paths and being selectively configurable to allocate a selected first set of said switch paths for optical circuit switching and to allocate a selected second set of said switch paths for optical burst switching; and control apparatus arranged to configure the said switch paths to allocate paths to said first and second sets and to separate data traffic to be dropped at the node from transit data traffic, and arranged to schedule data traffic for transmission on optical burst switching channels to the said optical sources assigned as optical burst switching channel sources.