US Patent 11044539 Mouse over elephant

An optical switch plane with one or more switch layers, each layer with multiple switches is provided. In a data center, an optical circuit switch plane is added between the device plane and packet switch plane. Direct speed of light connections may be created between devices, the data center temporally shrunk, remote devices localized, elephant flows kept out of mouse switches, mouse switch spend reduced, stranded resources recovered, layer 1 reconfigured and optimized, bare metal bent, secure tunnels created, networks physically isolated, failure resiliency increased, and packet switch congestion avoided.