Dynamic restoration involves routing and bandwidth assignment of an unplanned restoration path in a wavelength switched optical network (20), having regeneration nodes (60), nodes each having a ROADM (62) having drop paths and add paths. An electrical switch (68) provides configurable regeneration capacity by coupling selected drop paths to selected add paths. Some of the configurable regeneration capacity is kept for unplanned restoration paths. A PCE determines (120) routing and bandwidth assignments for an unplanned restoration path for the traffic flow to avoid a fault, and sends (130) configuration messages to the nodes to set up the unplanned restoration path dynamically and to configure the electrical switch to provide regeneration on the path. Keeping some reconfigurable regeneration capacity enables much longer unplanned paths to be found to avoid faults, and enables wavelength conversion if needed. Thus the reliability of finding at least one path avoiding the fault can be increased.

Techniques are provided for identifying and monitoring connections in an optical system. A plurality of optical ports is configured to receive a plurality of optical links that couple with one or more remote optical devices. At least one light source generates identification (ID) signals. At least one optical element configured to direct the ID signals into transmission paths from the source optical device to the remote optical device/s over the plurality of optical links. The remote optical device/s include one or more optical elements that direct the ID signals through a set of WDM filters and returns the ID signals. At least one optical element directs returned ID signals to an optical channel monitor. At least one microprocessor configured to execute control instructions to generate the ID signals and process one or more outputs of the optical channel monitor in response to the returned ID signals to identify the plurality of optical links.