Patent ID: 7020394

Claim:
A method of determining a shortest path between a source node and a destination node in an optical network having plural network nodes interconnected with optical transmission links, the method comprising: assigning an electronic node to each network node, the electronic node representing an electronic switching fabric interconnecting optical-electrical-optical (OEO) transmitters and receivers of the network node; assigning optical channel nodes to each network node, each optical channel node representing an optical cross-connect for an optical channel available at the network node; for each network node, assigning an internal link from the electronic node to each optical channel node only if an associated OEO transmitter is available for the corresponding optical channel associated with a particular one of the available wavelengths λ 1 through λ m , and assigning an internal link to the electronic node from each optical channel node only if an associated OEO receiver is available for the corresponding optical channel associated with a particular one of the available wavelengths λ 1 through λ m ; for each optical transmission link, assigning an optical channel link between a pair of optical channel nodes of corresponding network nodes only if the corresponding optical channel is available on the associated optical transmission link; and assigning costs to the internal links and the optical channel links.