Abstract: A technique for address registration and resolution is disclosed. In one embodiment, the technique is realized by an address registration and resolution service that is applicable to in-band in-fiber, out-of-band in-fiber and out-of-band out-of-fiber O-UNI signaling configurations. Through this address registration and resolution scheme, an optical service subscriber or optical access service provider can register various client-layer addresses (i.e., establish an association between the client addresses and the optical network points of attachment for the network intelligence.) An intelligent optical routing protocol will propagate this information all over the network and use this information to locate a corresponding optical client device and the optical network point of attachment. The optical network signaling can then perform the network internal signaling for on-demand optical service provisioning.

Abstract: In a packet-switched network having a plurality of nodes interconnected by links, pre-defined protection paths provide protection of a selected plurality of links. Adjacent nodes connected by a protected link are adapted to detect a failure of the protected link, to encapsulate packets within tunnel packets, to differentiate between tunnel packets and non-tunnel packets and to exchange the tunnel packets via a protection path rather than via the failed link. This results in faster automatic protection switching of packet-based traffic. The invention is particularly suited to an Internet Protocol network.