The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Mar. 14, 2000
Filed:
Feb. 20, 1998
John A Fee, Plano, TX (US);
Sridhar Nathan, Plano, TX (US);
MCI Communications Corporation, Washington, DC (US);
Abstract
A plurality of optical cross-connect switches are freely interconnected to form a mesh type network. At least three of the optical cross-connect switches are switched to form a line-switched ring network, thereby forming a ring/mesh network. Simply by changing the switching logic of the optical cross-connect switches within the ring/mesh network, new rings can be created and existing rings can be modified, thereby providing a great deal of flexibility to make changes to the network as traffic patterns change without incurring hardware costs or significant network downtime. Another advantage of the ring/mesh design approach is that spare capacity within the line-switched ring can be utilized by the mesh network, and spare capacity within the mesh network can be utilized by the line-switched ring, thereby significantly increasing the spare efficiency.