Patent 7298971 was granted and assigned to Sprint on November, 2007 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
A communication system includes nodes that exchange communications over optical fibers. In the event of a fault, the nodes implement ring protection for a first set of the communications and implement mesh protection for a second set of the communications. Ring protection may be used for two degree nodes and mesh protection may be used for higher degree nodes, or a customer may select between ring protection and mesh protection.