Optimum (News - Alert) Communications Services (OCS) announced that it was granted a patent enabling “bandwidth of physical layer connections of communications networks to be continuously optimized according to real-time data traffic load variations.”

The US patent #7,986,713 delivers the innovation of automatically optimizing network physical layer bandwidth allocation at microsecond timescale in units of less than 100 bytes. The innovation involves implementing network control plane in hardware logic together with the data plane, to keep the control loop in synchrony with packet-by-packet data plane dynamics.

The result is an Adaptive-Mesh network architecture providing continuously right sized, transparent, secure and high performance physical layer connectivity between the packet switching nodes interconnected.

There is a demand for this kind of technology. Standard developments including Hitless Adjustment of ODUflex and Link Capacity Adjustment Scheme underscore market demand for resizable network physical layer connectivity, particularly for variable bit rate packet services.

These network physical layer techniques avoid costs, security concerns and performance drawbacks that arise when switching traffic at packet layers. The industry feels these techniques are promising for secure packet-based communications services.

A critical remaining challenge for the physical layer optimization techniques is to reach the statistical multiplexing bandwidth efficiency of packet switching, according to a press statement.

Conventional systems for adjusting the bandwidth rates operate at orders of magnitude at slower pace than what is required in order to deliver the business value of right-sized network connections.

Recently, OCS was granted the UK patent GB2456719 for transparent network and service management techniques. The technology enables automatic configuration of network elements from network service contract definitions.

These management techniques are effective for managing intelligent network elements, such as those per the U.S patent 7,986,713 that are able to operate dynamically based on the network data plane dynamics, even under static network management control.