Abstract: The present invention provides layer one, two and three (L1/L2/L3) Integration and L1 cut-through path utilization in an apparatus and method of fault recovery. A switch combines an IP router with L2 capabilities, and an L1 cross connect (optical or electrical). A network of such switches is configured with label switched paths (LSP) that correspond to layer 1 (L1) cut-through paths. The layer 2 (L2) cut-through path is over laid on the L1 cut-through path and the L2 cut-through path is used for IP data flows. Preferably, the L2 cut-through paths are defined as label switched paths (LSP) and the L1 cut-through paths are each an end-to-end path established with L1 cross connects associated with each switch.

Abstract: A method and apparatus for routing data packets via a synchronous optical (SONET) network from devices connected to a local area network to devices connected to other local area networks. At each transport node in the SONET network the data packets are unloaded from SONET payloads and requeued for transmission on an output path. This allows for easy resolution of contention between devices transmitting at the same time and avoids pre-assigning SONET channels. Source and destination address information from the data packets can be used to route the data packets through the SONET network. A time-to-live indicator can be used to find the shortest path to a destination address in a SONET ring network or any bidirectional ring network.