Patent Document ID: 8750161
Application ID: 12972651
Patent Flag: 1

Claim One:
1. A method for determining a configuration of an IP aggregation network, the IP aggregation network including access packet switches and network backbone packet switches, comprising: receiving input data regarding the IP aggregation network, including customer locations, network facility locations and fiber paths; in a computer processor, selecting a subset of the network facility locations to be access packet switch locations, whereby a total fiber path length from the access packet switch locations to the customer locations is minimized; in the computer processor, selecting a subset of the network facility locations to be network backbone packet switch locations, including: creating a set of virtual nodes, each virtual node comprising a pair of network facility locations within a transmission range limitation of each other, and each network facility location of each pair having at least fiber degree 3; calculating, for each combination of a candidate access packet switch location and a candidate virtual node, diverse paths from the candidate access packet switch location to each of the two network facility locations of the candidate virtual node; calculating, for each combination of a candidate access packet switch location and a candidate virtual node, a fiber cost of the diverse paths; and applying a k-means clustering algorithm wherein k is a number of virtual nodes, to select a subset of the set of virtual nodes yielding a minimum total cost including fiber cost and network backbone packet switch cost.