MPLS application to optical cross-connect using wavelength as a label
AssigneeNortel Networks Limited
InventorPeter Aswood Smith
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A label switching routing protocol for establishing a datapath as a sequence of locally unique labels in an optical communications network, is provided. A wavelength on an optical cross-connect is considered as a label, or one portion of a label. Timeslots may be assigned to designated wavelengths so as to form the second portion of a composite label. An optical/time cross-connect (OTXC) capable of wavelength conversion from an input to an output interface creates the datapath based on wavelength to wavelength substitution, under the control of a multi-protocol label switching (MPLS) protocol.
Claims12
A label switching routing method for multi-protocol label switching (MPLS) optical communications network, comprising:
- establishing a datapath as a network of labels between a source and a sink in said optical communications network, wherein each label includes a wavelength field containing a value of a wavelength frequency to be used for communication over a corresponding portion of the datapath associated with the label;
- converting a first wavelength field of a first label to a second wavelength of a second label and forwarding the traffic to said sink according to said datapath, including updating the sequence of labels to replace the first label with the second label;
- and
- transmitting said second wavelength label to said source.
An optical/time cross-connect (OTXC) for providing wavelength to wavelength conversion in a multi-protocol label switching (MPLS) optical communications network, comprising:
- means for providing a first label having a wavelength field for containing a value of a first wavelength frequency to be used for communication over a corresponding portion of a datapath associated with the label;
- means for converting the value of the first wavelength frequency associated with an incoming signal of the OTXC into a value of a second wavelength frequency associated with an outgoing signal of the OTXC;
- means for updating a label associated with a communication path of the incoming signal to provide the value of the second wavelength frequency in the wavelength field of the label;
- and
- means for forwarding the updated label to a source.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.