Patent ID: 7206475

Claim:
An optical switching apparatus comprising: an optical switch which has plural input portions and plural output portions, carries out switching of a route of an optical signal to transmit the optical signal from an arbitrary input portion among said plural input portions to an arbitrary output portion among said plural output portions, monitoring units each of which monitors the optical signal from one of the plural output portions of said optical switch and transmits a monitor signal giving notification of a state of the optical signal based on the monitoring, a controller which receives the monitor signals from said monitoring units and, in cases in which it is judged that there is an abnormal optical signal based on the monitor signals, instructs the optical switch to compulsorily switch the route of the abnormal optical signal, wherein, said controller has a storing portion which stores in advance whether compulsory switching will be carried out for any of the output portions, in cases in which compulsory switching of said optical switch is carried out, and when said switching has been compulsorily carried out and a signal is received from a monitoring unit, said controller determines whether said monitoring unit which has outputted the signal monitors the optical signal outputted from the output portion, for which compulsory switching is carried out as stored in said storing portion.