Abstract: Automatic control of parameters of optical components such as colored losers in a transmit side WDM system includes the following steps. At a receiver side (NE21-NE2n)) predefined characteristics of a received signal are measured. The results (MEAS) of these measurements are communicated to a remote control system (NMS1) which runs an algorithm to determine corrective adjustment parameters (ADJ) and communicates them to the transmitter side (NE11-NE1n), which adjusts the optical components accordingly. The adjustment algorithm is implemented in one of the affected network elements or in the related network management system, preferably in the element manager (NMS1) of the affected network elements. The measurements are provided automatically to the algorithm; the related adjustments are provided automatically to the network elements, which contain the transmitters to be adjusted.

Abstract: Instead of a conventional task scheduler in which tasks having a high priority are preferentially scheduled, so that the execution of tasks with very low priorities is blocked, a “fair scheduler” is proposed in which each task (TA to TE) is assigned a counter (CNT) and a threshold value (THD), with the threshold value specifying a maximum number of execute cycles within which the task need not be executed immediately, and the counter counting those execute cycles within which the task is not executed. At the beginning of each execute cycle, a test is made to determine whether one of the counters exceeds the associated threshold value. If that is the case, one (TD) of the corresponding tasks (TC, TD) is selected by a selection criterion and executed, and its counter is reset. The counters assigned to the remaining tasks are incremented by one, and the execute cycle is repeated if it is found that at least one more of the tasks (TC) is waiting to be processed.

Abstract: Network elements of a digital communications network, for example of an SDH network (SDH=Synchronous Digital Hierarchy), are managed by controllers using managed objects. To permit fast access to managed objects, a simple circuit with a controller (FLT), a database (DB), and a temporary memory (MEM) is proposed. The controller carries out a method of managing the network element wherein in response to requests (RQ), the objects are stored into the memory and individual objects (MO*) are swapped out to make room for new data according to predeterminal criteria, which specify, for example, the maximum residence time of the object in the memory. At least these objects are transferred to the database (DB). Only upon reception of a request (RQ*) for access to an object (MO*) which is no longer in the memory (MEM) will this object (MO*) be read from the database and transferred back into the memory.