Abstract: Associated with an optical transport system, a packet oriented supervisory network provides differentiated classes of service (CoS) for a plurality of WDM layer applications on diverse nodes such that as soon as a higher priority application or packet arrives, the lower priority application is affected in favor of the higher one. One or more optical control channels (OSC) are used as the physical medium for implementing the packet oriented supervisory network of the invention. This new functionality of the optical control channel (OSC) enables multiple services by allowing each application to use up to 100% of the OSC bandwidth, if no other application is using it.

Abstract: A method of discovering information about a network in which a plurality of network elements on the network are each configured to use a different communication method to permit access to information stored in said network element. The method comprises the steps of attempting to communicate with each network element using one or more different communication methods, monitoring the responses, if any, from said network elements, and determining the communication method used by each network element based on the responses.

Abstract: A wayside Ethernet communications system is presented for use with an optical network. The wayside Ethernet communication system includes a first and second optical network element connected to the optical network. The first optical network element having is adapted to map the Ethernet frames into at least one optical network frame and operable to transmit the optical network frames over an optical supervisory channel of the optical network. The second optical network element is adapted to receive the optical network frames over the optical supervisory channel of the optical network and to extract the Ethernet frames from the optical network frames.

Abstract: Associated with an optical transport system, a packet oriented supervisory network provides differentiated classes of service (CoS) for a plurality of WDM layer applications on diverse nodes such that as soon as a higher priority application or packet arrives, the lower priority application is affected in favor of the higher one. One or more optical control channels (OSC) are used as the physical medium for implementing the packet oriented supervisory network of the invention. This new functionality of the optical control channel (OSC) enables multiple services by allowing each application to use up to 100% of the OSC bandwidth, if no other application is using it.