Embodiments of the present invention relate to the field of information technologies and disclose a link determining method, apparatus, and system for an optical packet switching system, which can reduce optical packet switching costs. The method includes: first, a control manager generates reference optical label information and an enabling signal, and sends the reference optical label information and the enabling signal to a link determining device; then, when the enabling signal is active, the link determining device determines, according to parsed-out actual optical label information and the received reference optical label information, whether an alarm signal is generated, and if it is determined that the alarm signal is generated, sends the alarm signal to the control manager; and finally, the control manager further determines, according to the received alarm signal, whether a link corresponding to the alarm signal is abnormal.

In order to achieve path diversity for dual-homed User-Network Interface clients connected to a Generalized Multiprotocol Label Switching control plane enabled transport network that is operated in an overlay mode, the overlay extension service model is enhanced by adding shared constraint information for path diversity in the optical transport network. In particular, within the provider network, shared constraint information of a first traffic path is determined and a data element indicative of the shared constraint information is returned by a first provider edge node to a customer edge device via a User-Network Interface. When the customer edge device requests a second traffic path through the provider network to be established from a second provider edge node and to be disjoint from said first traffic path, the customer edge device forwards the data element to the second provider edge node to enable path calculation of the second traffic path using the shared constraint information as exclusion list.

Methods for collecting information regarding a remote connector port that is connected to a patch panel connector port by a communications cable that has at least one data communications channel and a separate control channel are provided in which a first conductor of the separate control channel of the communications cable is biased to power an integrated circuit chip that is associated with the remote connector port. A first signal is transmitted over the separate control channel of the communications cable to the integrated circuit chip associated with the remote connector port. A second signal is received from the integrated circuit chip over the separate control channel of the communications cable in response to the first signal. The second signal includes information regarding the remote connector port.

A method of optical label swapping implemented by a switch used in a software defined network system that in one embodiment includes providing a 400-Gbit/s payload having a Nyquist shaped carrier in a 75-Ghz bandwidth spacing using a payload generator module controlling at least one first optical laser, and inserting a first optical label adjacent to the payload flow in a remainder of a 100-Ghz bandwidth with a label generator controlling at least one second optical laser. The label generator and the payload generator are controlled by a software defined network (SDN). A package of the payload and the first optical label is transmitted to a receiving node. The optical label can be swapped at the receiving node with a flex grid wavelength selective switch (WSS) controlled by the software defined network.