Patent ID: 7386232

Claim:
A method comprising: a Private Network-to-Network Interface (PNNI) route lookup procedure for a diverse route in an ATM network, wherein the procedure includes associating a first route with a first channel of two or more channels in a first dense wavelength division multiplex (DWDM) link; associating a second route with a second channel of the two or more channels in the first dense wavelength division multiplex (DWDM) link; associating a third route with a third channel of two or more channels in a second dense wavelength division multiplex (DWDM) link, the first route, the second route and the third route providing similar connections, the first DWDM link being different from the second DWDM link, the first DWDM link is associated with a first physical link identifier and the second DWDM link is associated with a second physical link identifier; propagating the first and second physical link identifiers to nodes of the ATM network, within system capabilities information fields of PNNI PTSE packets; and selecting the third route instead of the second route as a diverse alternate route to re-establish a connection that used the first route, by comparing the first physical link identifier with the second physical link identifier within received PTSE packets.