Patent ID: 8861735

Claim:
A method comprising: determining a supply of entangled photon pairs for distribution among pairs of a plurality of users communicating over an optical network during each clock cycle of a plurality of network clock cycles, wherein the determining is based on establishing a minimal number of connections among the plurality of users; distributing, via a reconfigurable wavelength routing device, the entangled photon pairs among the pairs of the plurality of users based on shared optical source frequencies among the entangled photon pairs and scheduled connection and duration times among the plurality of users, wherein each of a plurality of output ports of the reconfigurable wavelength routing device is associated with a user of the plurality of users, and wherein the shared optical source frequencies among the entangled photon pairs obey a known mathematical relation in which each shared optical source frequency is set to a middle of a wave selective switch frequency band; and establishing a key exchange among the plurality of users based on demand for key exchange bandwidth.