Patent ID: 7761006

Claim:
A method for designing accommodation of client signal paths in an optical network by using a computer system including a network topology information storing part and a client signal path information storing part, comprising: providing, by the computer system, the network topology information storing part with network topology information defining a connection relationship between nodes of the optical network; providing, by the computer system, the client signal path information storing part with client signal path information for each client signal path, the client signal path information including end node identification information and path bandwidth information, the end node identification information identifying a pair of end nodes comprising a transmitting end node and a receiving end node of the client signal path, the path bandwidth information indicating a bandwidth of the client signal path between the pair of end nodes; a first path subset selecting step of selecting, by the computer system, a first path subset of a total path set of client signal paths to be accommodated in the optical network; a first ring selecting step of selecting, by the computer system, a first ring topology including end nodes of all client signal paths included in the first path subset; a first path expanding step of expanding, by the computer system, the first path subset into a second path subset of the total path set by adding to the first path subset an additional client signal path that is not included in the first path subset and that has at least one node of the first ring topology as an end node thereof; and a first ring expanding step of searching, by the computer system, the network topology information for a second ring topology on a predetermined condition, the second ring topology including all nodes of the first ring topology and a pair of end nodes of the additional client signal path.