Patent ID: 7321729

Claim:
An optical network, comprising: an optical ring including a plurality of subnets; the subnets each comprising one or more add/drop nodes coupled to the optical ring and operable to passively add and drop traffic to and from the optical ring in one or more wavelengths; a plurality of gateway nodes, each gateway node coupled to the optical ring at a boundary between neighboring subnets, each gateway node operable to: forward a first copy of a received optical signal to a multiplexer/demultiplexer unit of the gateway node that is operable to selectively forward or terminate the traffic in each wavelength of the received optical signal; forward a second copy of the received optical signal to a regeneration element of the gateway node, the second copy thus bypassing the multiplexer/demultiplexer unit; selectively forward or terminate the traffic in each wavelength of the first copy at the multiplexer/demultiplexer unit, the forwarded traffic not being regenerated; and selectively perform one of the following on the traffic in each wavelength of the second copy at the regeneration element: terminate the traffic, forward the traffic after regenerating the traffic, or forward the traffic after regenerating and converting the wavelength of the traffic, wherein each wavelength that is regenerated by the regeneration element is terminated by the multiplexer/demultiplexer unit.