Patent ID: 8799430

Claim:
A method of implementing an optical virtual private network, the method comprising steps of: providing an optical virtual private network between client edge (CE) nodes of a carrier network, each CE node comprising at least one processor; a first CE node implementing a client edge-virtual private network (CE-VPN), wherein the CE-VPN provides an optical virtual private network service through the optical virtual private network; the first CE node associating a set of at least one client edge-user (CE-User) with the CE-VPN; the first CE node providing the optical private network service to each of the set of at least one CE-Users, and determining connectivity between each CE-User; establishing the connectivity determined by the first CE node; implementing a discovery mechanism for determining the set of at least one CE-User; and enabling a first CE-User to request a connection with a second CE-User, wherein the first CE-User and the second CE-User are associated with the CE-VPN.