Alcatel Lucent

Lucent Technologies Inc.

Alcatel-lucent USA Inc.

Hock Gin Lim

Jeffrey Kenneth Emery

Guy Claude Fortin

Paul Edward Beer

Youxun Duan

Ralph Stemmer

Markus Messenschmidt

Markus Messerschmidt

Robert George Alexander Craig

A network operating system NOS for an agile optical network with a plurality of mesh interconnected switching nodes, manages the network using an object-oriented network information model. The model is common to all applications requiring the data stored in the network managed information base. The core model can be expanded for serving specific application areas. The NOS is organized in layers, at the optical module level, connection level and network level. A distributed topology server DTS organizes the physical, logical and topological data defining all network entities as managed objects MO and topology objects TO for constructing a complete network view. The network information model associates a network element NE information model, specified by managed objects MO and a topological information model, specified by topology objects TO. The MOs are abstract specific NE data that define network implementation details and do not include any topological data, while the TOs abstract specific topological data for defining a trail established within the network, and do not include any NE data. The models are associated in a minimal number of points to construct the model of a trial in response to a connection request.

Network operating system with distributed data architecture

The network operating system includes an embedded platform for controlling operation of an agile optical network at the physical layer level. At the module embedded level, each module (card-pack) is provided with an embedded controller EC that monitors and control operation of the optical modules. At the next level, each shelf is provided with a shelf processor SP that monitors and control operation of the ECs over a backplane network. All optical modules are connected over an optical trace channel to send/receive trace messages that can then be used to determine network connectivity. At the next, link management level, a network services controller NSC controls the SPs in a negotiated span of control, over a link network. The control is address-based; each NSC receives ranges of addresses for the entities in its control, and distributes these addresses to the SPs, which in turn distribute addresses to the ECs in their control. One of the SPs operates as a router on the link network to relay signaling and control to all entities based on their address. Each NSC constructs, from queried information, a network topology fragment for the embedded elements under its control. A distributed topology system (DTS) shares this topology information with neighboring NSC's to build a complete network view, which can be used by all interested network applications.

Network operating system with topology autodiscovery

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Hock Gin Lim