System and method for in-service reconfiguration of a synchronous optical communications network

A system for in-service reconfiguration of bandwidth in a synchronous optical data communications network wherein data frames are transmitted from a transmit node and received at a receive node, said transmit node comprising a mapper/aggregator, a first bandwidth configuration memory associated with said mapper/aggregator and a transmit framer, said receive node comprising a demapper/deaggregator, a second bandwidth configuration memory associated with said demapper/deaggregator and a receive framer, said bandwidth reconfiguration system operating to reconfigure the allocation of bandwidth used at said nodes in response to an update request generated within said network and comprising:

• (a) a reconfiguration flag generator at said transmit node configured for generating a reconfiguration flag in response to detection of said update request, said reconfiguration flag configured for transmission from said transmit node to said receive node;
• and,
• (b) a reconfiguration flag detector at said receive node configured for detecting said reconfiguration flag;
• wherein each said first and second bandwidth configuration memory comprises first and second memory banks, said first memory bank of said first bandwidth configuration memory comprising current bandwidth allocation mapping information used by said mapper/aggregator and said first memory bank of said second bandwidth configuration memory comprising current bandwidth allocation mapping information used by said demapper/deaggregator, said second memory banks configured for receiving updated bandwidth allocation mapping information prior to said reconfiguration, wherein said updated bandwidth allocation mapping information of said first bandwidth configuration memory's second memory bank is selected for use by said mapper/aggregator in response to completion of said reconfiguration flag generated by said generator and said updated bandwidth allocation mapping information of said second bandwidth configuration memory's second memory bank is selected for use by said demapper/deaggregator in response to detection of said reconfiguration flag by said detector.