Abstract: Whether in a SONET or a dense-WDM (DWDM) transport environment, we can expect to see a continuance of the two main survivable architectures: ring and mesh. The differing advantages of these technologies has allowed both of them to find applications, although they are usually deployed and operate quite separately. To date, the problem of optimally combining ring and mesh technologies into a single integrated transport design remains largely unstudied. This patent document presents a planning principle and related optimization theory to strategically embed rings into a mesh network, with the purpose of obtaining a lower total design cost than that of either a pure-mesh or pure-ring design. The new design approach is based on a recently developed insight into the nature of spare capacity requirements in a mesh-restorable network. So-called “forcer” analysis identifies the spans that drive the dimensioning of spare quantities in the network.