Trail engineering in agile photonic networks

In an automatically switched optical network equipped with a data topology system (DTS) for maintaining updated information on regenerator availability and a wavelength database organized in wavelength bins, for maintaining updated data on Q-based performance and wavelength availability, where Q is a quality factor, a method of engineering a connection between a source network node with a destination network node, the method comprising:

• a) identifying from said DTS, a number of physical layer trails, N, connecting said source network node to said destination network node;
• for an optical trail Tn,
• b) identifying from said DTS a number k of regeneration sites and k+1 optical paths, an optical path OP(k) between a regeneration site Rk and a next downstream regeneration site Rk+1;
• and
• c) for each optical path OP(k), determining whether
• a group of qualified wavelength bins associated with each optical path OP(k) contains a wavelength available along the entire path OP(k);
• d) for each optical path OP(k) whose associated bin contains a wavelength available along the entire path OP(k), engineering a trail solution based on Q-based performance data of each of said optical paths OP(k) and storing said trail solution in a list.