At+t Corp.

Romanath Roy

Hanan Luss

John Gregory Klincewicz

Mohan Gawande

Nicholas Paul De Vito

Moshe B Rosenwein

A method is provided for designing a hierarchical architecture for a synchronous optical network (SONET) given a plurality of demand nodes at which communications traffic originates and at least one destination node at which the communications traffic is collected for transmission to a switch. The method includes the steps of: (a) dividing the plurality of demand nodes into distinct groups of demand nodes; (b) selecting at least one node for each group to serve as a ring hub for connection to a backbone ring; (c) designing a backbone ring topology that includes at least the ring hubs and the destination node; (d) designing an access ring topology for each of the demand node groups so that the backbone ring and access ring topologies constitute a preliminary network topology; (e) evaluating a cost associated with the preliminary network topology; (f) selecting at least one alternative ring hub to provide a new set of ring hubs; (g) repeating steps (c)-(e) for the new set of ring hubs to determine if a resulting network cost estimate is reduced; (h) repeating steps (f)-(g) until a minimum cost network topology is produced. Other aspects of the invention are directed to hub and spoke topology design and SONET transport design.

Method for designing SONET ring networks suitable for local access

A machine, method and medium for allocating resources over given time periods. Various requests (e.g., from customers) are received for products and/or services, and a preferred scheme for allocating resources, over a plurality of time periods, to provide the requested products and/or services, is determined. Marketing, procurement and production processes are taken into account in the analysis. The end result is a set of systems indicating how the resources should be deployed over the various time periods to satisfy customer demand.

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Bridgewater, NJ, United States of America

Romanath Roy