Patent ID: 7672316

Claim:
A method for overhead processing in an optical network, comprising: receiving overhead bytes and virtual container numbers corresponding to the overhead bytes; storing overhead bytes of different paths in different address spaces of an overhead memory according to the virtual container numbers; obtaining an overhead byte to be processed by polling the different address Spaces of the overhead memory; determining a corresponding overhead processing unit for the overhead byte of the stored overhead bytes according to a type of the overhead byte; processing the overhead byte by the corresponding overhead processing unit; wherein the number of the overhead processing units corresponding to a type of the overhead bytes is less than the number of the paths; and the obtaining the overhead byte to be processed by polling the different address spaces of the overhead memory comprises: determining whether a byte code of the overhead byte is different from a byte code of a former polled overhead byte, wherein an address space of the former polled overhead byte is the same with that of the overhead byte, wherein the byte code is used for indicating a type of a corresponding overhead byte; and processing the overhead byte if it is determined that the byte code of the overhead byte is different from the byte code of the former polled overhead byte.