Patent ID: 7162155

Claim:
An optical packet switching method for switching inputted optical packets over NW wavelengths, the inputted optical packets comprising optical packets having different attributes of a characteristic based on delay sensitivity, the optical packets having different attributes of a characteristic based on delay sensitivity also comprise optical packets having different attributes of a characteristic based on optical packet bit-rate range, and NW is an integer greater than one, the method comprising: grouping the NW wavelengths into KG groups of wavelengths both according to the different attributes of the characteristic based on delay sensitivity and according to the different attributes of the characteristic based on optical packet bit-rate range so that each of the KG groups of wavelengths is allocated to optical packets having both a common delay sensitivity level and a common bit-rate range which are different from at least one of the following: a delay sensitivity level of other optical packets; and a bit-rate range of other optical packets, where KG is an integer greater than one; and switching each one inputted optical packet over a wavelength having an available transmission resource selected from among wavelengths in one of said KG groups of wavelengths that is matched to the one inputted optical packet by correspondence of both a delay sensitivity level and a bit-rate range.