Patent ID: 8095009

Claim:
A method for distributing node information, comprising the following steps: generating, by an optical node, an information bit stream based on its own node information, wherein the node information comprises potential wavelength connectivity information and wavelength occupancy status information, wherein potential wavelength connectivity capability of each pair of wavelengths is represented by at least one bit, bits representing potential wavelength connectivity capability between all the wavelengths of two traffic engineering (TE) links on the optical node constitute potential wavelength connectivity information bit stream of the optical node, occupancy status of a wavelength is represented by at least one bit, bits representing occupancy status of all wavelengths of a TE link on the optical node constitute wavelength occupancy status information bit stream of the optical node; and distributing, by the optical node, the generated information bit stream and a wavelength sequence corresponding to the node information, wherein the generated information bit stream comprises the potential wavelength connectivity information bit stream and the wavelength occupancy status information bit stream.